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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24495592">Like a phoenix from the ashes</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mitsuky/pseuds/Mitsuky'>Mitsuky</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Awakening [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Iron Man (Movies), Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>A short aparition of John Adams before he winks out, Gen, God!Tony Strak, People should know better than to mess with Tony after the incident with War Monger, Right?, The Ten Rings go BOOM!, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark-centric</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 05:13:46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>22,644</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24495592</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mitsuky/pseuds/Mitsuky</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The first instalment of these series starts with Tony Stark in 2010, February.</p><p>You know how the story goes; he's kidnapped, a bomb explodes, shit happens, but... that is as far as things remain the same.</p><p>Just like when you throw a stone and ripples form in the surface of a lake, Tony is a big factor that, if changed, then creates ripples in all of the world around him.</p><p>I'm playing with that here and shamelessly changing things to suit my tastes. Consider yourself warned.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Happy Hogan &amp; Tony Stark, James "Rhodey" Rhodes &amp; Tony Stark, Jarvis (Iron Man movies) &amp; Tony Stark, Pepper Potts &amp; Tony Stark</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Awakening [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1769674</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>92</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Reborn</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is inspired directly by a MCU marathon during the quarantine.<br/>If you recognize something, it isn't mine.</p><p>Enjoy!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The guitar at the beginning of <em>Back in Black</em> sounds in the background as Tony sits inside the shaking Humvee, the battery joining soon after and then the song starts properly. Tony takes a sip of his drink and looks around the vehicle, at the soldiers, the silence feeling really awkward. But he has made a speciality of ending awkward moments and soon they are laughing and taking pictures with him. It’s all fun and full of laughs, until the first explosion takes the Humvee in front of them apart and things go to hell.</p>
<p>The camera falls to the floor as the soldiers get ready to respond, forgotten; Tony’s drink falls and shatters too and they get down the truck, one after another, dying and falling like ragdolls to the floor, bloody and broken.</p>
<p>White noise disorients Tony as explosions keep going off outside, shock makes him react sluggishly as he tries to get off the Humvee and escape. Rhodey’s voice sounds far away but not loud enough for him to understand his words, and then he’s hiding behind a rock and trying to call-</p>
<p>The <em>Stark Industries</em> logo greets him suddenly as a bomb falls close to him in the dirt and he stares stupidly at itㅡ<em>USM 11676</em>ㅡletting precious seconds go away, seconds he could have used to run away. When his brain catches up, two seconds too late, he stands and the bomb explodes right in his face, throwing him backwards and knocking the breath out of his lungs. Pain, PAIN, <em>PAIN, <strong>PAIN!</strong></em></p>
<p>Never before had he felt so much pain, and as he opens the soaking white shirt, he notices why with a grunt. He’s bleeding, badly. The undershirt armour was pierced by the shrapnel of the bomb and he only has a few seconds to run down that thought in his head before he loses consciousness.</p>
<p>
  <em>Light blinds him.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>       More pain.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>               PAIN!</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Chatter and the smell of something burning filled his nose.</em>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <em>Everything shakes, dizzying him.</em>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <em>He’s unconscious a second and able to feel more from time to time. He hears voices, discussing heatedly about something.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>He just wants the pain to STOP damn it!</em>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <em>Black and silver butterflies fly around him as he wakes up and watches in horror how a balding man with glasses takes metal pieces from his chest. The group of people surrounding him do something that makes the pain much worse if possible.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Fire and volcanoes erupt, appearing in the middle of the darkness of his head.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>His chest feels on fire and he hears screaming ringing in his ears before noticing they are his. He screams until a white beautiful dove lands nearby as he watches the same balding man puts something in his chest but the pain is suddenly gone as he observes the dove turning to look at him, ignoring the movement around it. The animal makes a small noise that Tony doesn’t have a name for, and vanishes just as a white light engulfs him.</em>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>He knows he’s unconscious again, but it doesn’t feel like it as a thunderbolt suddenly crashes down in front of him and he flinches back, the smell of ozone reaches his nose as an eagle comes out of the scorching blackness left behind, which disappears a moment later when the animal takes flight and hovers in front of him, its wings extended and looking at him as if judging Tony. Its beak opens and odd words come out of it, a language he’s never heard before fills his ears and he starts to... shine? He looks down at his hands, noticing the golden light coming from his own skin and feeling oddly warm all of a sudden. He looks back up and the eagle is now a muscular man, he has golden armour, golden eyes, a white cape, sandals, a trimmed brown beard and shiny brown hair… He’s the spitting image of a Greek soldier sculpture, curly hair and bulging muscles included. Tony blinks as the man smiles at him and vanishes, a single rich brown feather falling to the infinite white expanse in front of him until it touches what must be the floor and creates ripples like water on it . . .</em>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <em>. . . and Tony <span class="u">remembers</span>.</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p><hr/>
<p>Tony snaps awake with a start, finding himself surrounded by strangers, a camera filming the scene as a man to his left starts reading out loud from a piece of paper in some kind of oriental language. All of them have guns, one has a knife, their heads are covered by cloth and they ignore him in favour of staring blankly ahead to the recording device.</p>
<p>His chest is still on fire and he turns his gaze downwards, trying to avoid the blinding light. He knows he has something there, there is some kind of round metal embedded in his chest for some odd reason and he doesn’t like it one bit. Who gave anyone permission to do this to him? The gauze tightly wound around his chest is already red and getting worse by the second when the man stops talking and his menacing voice is directed at him instead when the camera is turned off.</p>
<p>They march him to a cell by a series of tunnels as they seem to be residing in some kind of cave. Once thrown unceremoniously inside the cave, they hold him still as someone keeps a rag with chloroform over his mouth and nose for the second time in what he assumes is but a few hours, making him fall to the darkness once more.</p>
<p>He has very weird dreams of fire, of glowing people, of… magic, really, there is no other way to call the shapeless colourful mist doing the strangest of things. That’s all he dreams about until he returns back to the waking world.</p>
<p>He gasps awake and white immediately forms as his breath is warmer than the cold cave air. He still feels the pain in his chest, but as he coughs, groans, and moves to take the thin tube from his nose, it <em>burns</em>. His movements are stilted and he feels terrible, he knocks off a metal cup and groans. Why is it so difficult to get some water here? Tony coughs some more as he turns on the cot, staring when he finds a man nearby. The mas shaves in front of a dirty and small mirror, humming softly. Tony freaks out for a second, hurrying to grab anything to fight him if he needs to-</p>
<p>But he’s stopped by a painful tug to his chest.</p>
<p>“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” the man turns momentarily to look at him, but returns to his task soon after.</p>
<p>Tony turns on his back, grasping the wires connecting him to a… a battery. A car battery? What? Why?! <em>What is going on?!</em> He stares at the thing in horror. Why is he hooked up to a damn car battery? Where is he? What is happening? Rhodey… <em>Where</em> is Rhodey? Oh gods, is he still <em>alive</em>?!</p>
<p>And suddenly Tony remembers the bomb, exploding quite literally on his face. He looks at the wires connecting him to the battery and touches his chest. The circle feels as cold and hard as the metal he knew was there but didn’t quite comprehended <em>why</em>. He tugs at the flimsy gauze and tears it apart, finding the strange apparatus protruding from bloody and inflamed skin. His breath becomes laborious and his mind whirls, he feels like fainting and unable to formulate a straight though as only panic and fear registers in his brain for the time being.</p>
<p>When he recovers, he has a short chat with the man. His name is Ho Yinsen, a physicist and engineer that Tony apparently met at a conference when he was completely drunkㅡbut not less able to give a talk about integrated circuits. They are interrupted though, and Tony meets the man behind his kidnapping and his henchmen. They want him to build weapons, Tony refuses, they torture him putting his head again and again underwater. He never thought he’d ever feel so much dislike of water, but after the splashes make the wire short-circuit, torturing him further, Tony starts becoming violent ill just by thinking about the tank of water the terrorists like to submerge him under. Three days passed like this when then they put a brown bag over his head and took him outside.</p>
<p>The canyon is full of more <em>Stark Industries</em> weapons to either side as they walk along the path, stopping in the middle of the encampment where dozens of terrorists surround him.</p>
<p>Things go the same as the first time. Abu Bakar, and Tony will be remembering <em>that</em> name, talks while Yinsen translates. They want a Jericho no matter what, so Tony starts planning in his head while he shakes hands with Abu, and Yinsen agrees to his negative comment. No, he won’t be let free. If he wants to get out, he has to let himself out of there… and one way or another, <em>he will</em>.</p>
<p>“Then this is a very important week for you,” are Yinsen’s words in answer to more of his negativity some days later. The words that give him the proper motivation to do more than plan, and pushes him to start acting on his ideas of a scape. But first, first he has to get the damn car battery off of him, there’s no working whit that hooked up to his chest and getting in the way.</p>
<p>Once he has a clear idea of what he needs to rid himself of the battery he lets Yinsen know and Abu puts his men at work, bringing to them the things Tony asks for as he makes the order.</p>
<p>“S-Category missiles. Lot 7043. The S-30 explosive tritonal. And a dozen of the S-76. Mortars: M-Category #1, 4, 8, 20, and 60. M229’s, I need eleven of these. Mines: the pre-90s AP 5’s and AP 16’s…” He acts focused while the men bring thing after thing into the room. If it weren’t for the guns hanging from their backs, Tony isn’t sure he’d be capable of pulling it off, but needs must and all that. He deserves an Oscar for such good acting skills he’s showing.</p>
<p>Yinsen translates all the while, talking more languages than Tony thought possible from a single person to learn, it’s truly amazing.</p>
<p>“...this area free of clutter, with good light. I want it at 12 o’clock to the door to avoid logjams. I need welding gear, acetylene or propane, helmets, a soldering set-up with goggles, and smelting cups. Two full sets of precision tools.” It’s a long time until everything is ready and all the while Abu smiles from the door, looking pleased with himself. And if this is all it takes for him to be happy, then Tony will make sure to put the best act ever in order to make his plan work. He’ll get out of this place… <em>They’ll</em> get out of this place, he corrects.</p>
<p>“How many languages do you speak,” Tony asks while dismantling a missile with the most awkward tools he’s ever had the displeasure of handling to create anything.</p>
<p>“A lot, but apparently not enough for this place. They speak Arabic, Urdu, Dari, Pashto, Mongolian, Farsi, Russian.”</p>
<p>Tony takes out the guts of the missile and leaves them over the table, “Who are these people?”</p>
<p>“They are your loyal customers, sir,” Yinsen gives him a barely-there smile. “They call themselves the Ten Rings.”</p>
<p>They keep talking as Tony works, dismantling more missiles until he finds what he was looking for in one of them. Yinsen wanted to help, so he gave the man indications on how to take them apart and help Tony to find more palladium.</p>
<p>Tony’s as good as always with multitasking, so while they built a miniaturized arc-reactor, his plans get more detailed and he writes them down when he finds the time.</p>
<p>The day finally arrives and they finish the arc-reactor. Yinsen has to help him put it on, but he’s saved Tony’s life once already and is as much a captive of the terrorist as he’s, besides, it isn’t like there are too many other options for help nearby.</p>
<p>Once the change is over, Tony sits on the cot and looks down at the blue light now sitting in his chest. The taste of coconut floods his mouth as he does so and he’s a little surprised with himself to be truthful. A sense of accomplishment fills him and he knows then that he can take on the terrorists if he puts his mind to it. Yinsen and he will live to see the light again. They’ll get out and clean the floor with these murderers.</p>
<p>“This is our ticket out of here,” Tony tells Yinsen one day, putting onion-paper on a table to show him his plan.</p>
<p>“What is it?”</p>
<p>“Flatten them out and look.”</p>
<p>Once the paper is flat, the schematics that by themselves didn’t make sense, make a complex and more understanding picture together. The schematics to build a big iron armour.</p>
<p>“Oh, wow.” Tony looks at Yinsen pleased by the reaction. “Impressive.”</p>
<p>And then they start working in earnest just as the first month of their captivity reaches its end.</p><hr/>
<p>Yinsen makes a backgammon board, creating something for them to relax and enjoy while taking a rest from their work. During those moments, while they move some screws and cylinders on the board, talking and getting to know each other, Tony learns about Gulmira and Yinsen’s family, how he was the champion of backgammon at Cambridge, his studies, and genius level of intellect. Tony never had to fight a game so hard as when he plays with the man.</p>
<p>It’s one of those days that the doors are opened and Abu talks more harshly than usual as he gets them to stand up. But unlike other times, the terrorists make way for someone else to walk into the room and talk. He talks English surprisingly enough.</p>
<p>“Relax,” he says and Tony shares a look with Yinsen who looks worried.</p>
<p>The man introduces himself as Raza, the <em>real</em> leader of the bunch of psychopaths and the man who usually hung in the back watching until now. He certainly looks more dangerous than the rest. He takes a look at Tony’s chest, moving the thin t-shirt for a better view. Tony doesn’t like it and stares at him in silence and wariness, fighting back the beginning of a panic attack.</p>
<p>Raza takes a look around, finding Tony’s schematics and humming. He takes a walk around the room and inspects their work.</p>
<p>“The bow and arrow were once the pinnacle of weapons technology. It allowed the great Genghis Khan to rule from the Pacific to Ukraine. Today...whoever has the latest Stark weapons rules these lands. Soon it will be my turn…”</p>
<p>A beat goes on as the man stares from Tony to Yinsen in ominous silence, suddenly talking to Yinsen in another language. They exchange words and Tony starts to get a feeling of dread settling in his gut as he understands but measly words here and there. Raza gives the men an order and Abu along with some others put Yinsen’s head over the anvil while Raza blows on a lump of red-hot coal that he grabbed with some pincers. The terrorists walk closer to the scientist, still talking in another language Tony doesn’t get.</p>
<p>“What’s going on?” Tony speaks but nobody bothers to answer.</p>
<p>Raza gets the men to forcefully open Yinsen’s mouth and gets the coal closer until it’s almost touching his lips.</p>
<p>“What do you want? A delivery date?” Tony asked again, this time taking a step closer and getting the immediate reaction from the group raising their weapons at him, but it had the positive effect of getting Raza’s attention so he counted it as a win, even as cold sweat formed in his temples and panic settled for the time being.</p>
<p>The man stares impassively at him for a few tense minutes as he hums, until he lets the pincers fall to the floor and walks out of the room in silence, followed by the rest of his group.</p>
<p>Once the doors are closed, Tony releases a long breath and Yinsen sighs against the anvil. They share a heavy glance before fixing the room as best they can and return to their game.</p>
<p>“How much longer?” Yinsen asks suddenly in the middle of the game, after a long bout of no words.</p>
<p>Tony frowns, “At least three more weeks.” He snorts, “What a terrible way to end our second month in captivity.”</p>
<p>“Being here is already the worst,” Yinsen adds giving him an incredulous look.</p>
<p>Tony looks at him for a few seconds before concentrating back on the board. Of course, Yinsen would think this bad, he’s never been kidnapped before… unlike Tony. But he has to agree with the man on something, this is the worse of them all, never before has Tony had to endure this much stress, torture and blackmail in the form of Yinsen’s life put in the line for him. The other times seem tame in comparison and Howard got him out of the mess before even a week passed by… Most of the time anyway, and there’s little to no chance of Rhodey or anyone else getting him out if this mess like Howard used to.</p>
<p>They don’t want money this time, they want weapons that can literally tear a hole in the earth and destroy a city in seconds.</p>
<p>Tony has only one thought about that: <em>Over his dead body.</em></p><hr/>
<p>“My people have a tale about a Prince, much hated by his King, who was banished to the underworld and jailed there…” Yinsen starts saying one day, close to the three weeks’ timeline, after a moment of staring at Tony working on hammering the metal on his hands.</p>
<p>Sweat runs down Tony’s temple as he works on the glowing metal. He glances at Yinsen quickly, to show he’s listening, but continues hammering on.</p>
<p>“The evil King gave him the most difficult labour, working the iron pits.”</p>
<p>Tony frowns down at the chest plate, not getting where Yinsen is going with the story, but interested enough yet.</p>
<p>“Year after year the Prince mined the heavy ore, becoming so strong he could crush pieces of it together with his bare hands. Too late, the King realized his mistake…”</p>
<p>Tony smiles toothily, finally getting it.</p>
<p>“When he struck at the Prince with his finest sword, it broke in half. The Prince himself had become strong as iron…”</p>
<p>Leaving the finished piece on the table to cool down, Tony takes stock of himself. Droplets run down hardened muscles on his bare arms and he’s surprised as he hasn’t noticed how toned he became lately, even more than he knew he would and was expecting.</p>
<p>He shrugs and takes the next piece to work on, thinking that maybe it was because he stopped eating greasy food and Yinsen made sure they had meals regularly, unlike before when he used to get in the lab and work on creating new things without eating or even showering for days at a time. Surely, it’s that. Regular meals, lots of heavy handwork, and no alcohol or junk food. Must be that, he thinks in the end, trying to ignore the whispering voices in the back of his mind that say otherwise and laugh at his wilful forgetfulness of the dreams he’d had the past months, and takes the red metal from the fire to start hammering again.</p><hr/>
<p>Is almost the anniversary of their third month in captivity, or at least the marking in the corner counting the days say so, when Tony and Yinsen are enjoying another game of backgammon and Abu opens the slat at the door and shouts, walking into the cave.</p>
<p>Tony got him to bring them a washing machine after a lot of insistence, and the man also uses it to get clean clothes for himself. Yinsen told the man something in Arabic, that he’s teaching Tony slowly so he understood something about clothes, so probably Abu was there to get his clothes. And indeed, the man walked to a basket next to the machine and got a pile of neatly folded clothes from it, smelling them and sighing pleased.</p>
<p>He made a stop as he walked away, looking down at their game board and said something of which Tony only understood ‘idiots’ and ‘game’. Yinsen smirked and translated for Tony, making him laugh as both of them know more than the man can even imagine considering both were champs of backgammon at their respective colleges.</p>
<p>Abu was about to walk out of there when Raza made an apparition, making all of them froze in their places. Raza took a look around the room, then at Abu and pointedly stared at the clothes in the man’s hands for a nerve-inducing second, and without losing an ounce of his calm look shot the man between his eyes.</p>
<p>“You have ‘till tomorrow to assemble my missile,” Raza said looking at Tony directly in the eyes, and then turned and left, letting a few others walk in to drag Abu from his legs and out of there.</p>
<p>Since they had more than enough time to prepare all the pieces they needed, Tony took a small nap of an hour before getting to assemble the entirety of the suit. Yinsen insisted about it, saying he’ll need all of his strength for the next step of their plan.</p>
<p>He dreamed, like all the previous nights before, about <em>Fire</em>. For some reason that escapes him, he’d dream again and again about fire <em>everywhere</em>. A black space with no beginning or end and fire dancing all around him. Other times he’d be standing in a field of grass, fire slowly covering his body, and then he’d shot in the air, leaving a burning stela on his path as he flew away. Some other times, the strangest of them all, he’d be nothing but a ball of fire himself, burning brightly, golden and blue, looking over an infinite white expanse.</p>
<p>The dreams were also filled with strangers talking to him. The settings ranging from the most common where he talks with a man and laughs as they work on the forge creating weapons, others weirder where he sees himself and an array of naked woman surrounding him and all of them drinking, eating, and having sex in a massive orgy. Very, very weird. But the craziest was a repetitive dream about him kneeling in front of many people on thrones, as they look down at him with many expressions, from angry, to disappointed, and everything in between. He always wakes up feeling angry after that dream. Uncontrolled rage burning under his skin for some reason.</p>
<p>Once, Yinsen told him his eyes burn golden when he wakes up, and after many times to be a coincidence, Tony realized it was because of that dream in particular, and probably because of the anger filling him at the moment.</p>
<p>He isn’t sure what <em>it</em> is… but he isn’t as worried about it as he’s sure he’d been if this was happening to him a few months ago. Before getting kidnapped.</p>
<p>It is as if his brain did a click and suddenly his personality changed. He’s not entirely different, but some base character traits of his have entirely shifted and he can’t understand why. People would say that it’s because of the kidnapping, the trauma of his torture at the hand of the Ten Rings, but Tony knows best. Yes, this is his worst experience with kidnapping so far, but it isn’t as traumatic to him as expected.</p>
<p>Besides, trauma can’t make a person look younger and Tony certainly looks the part. The grey hairs that started to appear on his head vanishing one night and making him make a double-take after getting sight of himself in the small mirror the next morning. The laughing lines also disappearing, but slower than his grey hair. He’s also stronger, sharper of mind, and feeling as if he can survive without sleep or food for a long time if not for the insistence of a worried friend making him eat and rest regularly. He most assuredly couldn’t bend metal with his bare hands before, not even in his best years when he was in his twenties, and he’s turning forty in a month so… yeah, that’s not caused by trauma, that’s for sure.</p>
<p>And if that weren’t enough, he can hear better and more, being capable of understanding muttered words from the terrorists behind the door keeping them inside the workshop. His sight is better and the dim lights of the cave don't bother him as much anymore. And sometimes… sometimes he almost feels like the heat of the fire of the forge goes <em>up</em> whenever he gets closer as if it reacts to his closeness… and <em>that</em>, that freaks him out none too little.</p>
<p>So many changes in so little time, it makes him feel apprehensive of what all of it means . . . <em>but</em>, as he looks down at the prone and lifeless form of Yinsen over some sacs he lets all of his worries flush away and determination and anger fills him instead. Rage burns under his skin, feeling like a thousand ants crawling over him, and as he stands at the mouth of the cave that’s been his prison for the last three months, with the rest of Raza’s men pointing guns in his direction, Tony waits for the wave of bullets to end and raises his arms. Following the lead of his instincts, Tony lets the strange feelings explode out of him, fire surging forward and burning everything around him with golden-blue flames and the terrorist’s screams are all that he hears for a while until his weapons, stored around the cave’s entrance, start exploding.</p>
<p>His brain receives an <em>update</em> then and he falls to the floor clutching his head with a grimace of pain.</p>
<p>It is almost as if a movie is put at play inside his brain, at fast forward, with white noise in place for any other sounds, and he’s completely unable to stop it, watching the scenes and feeling like his skull is being squeezed by a big hand at the same time.</p>
<p>An entire lifetime plays inside his brain, a baby being born, his childhood, his family, his messes and accomplishments, his heartbreaks and joys, his friends and enemies, his knowledge, the intimate times, travels all around the galaxy . . . and him getting punished for almost starting a war against a powerful alien race and leading the entirety of the Olympians down with him.</p>
<p>And then, the name. The child’s name, the man’s name, Tony’s previous name before being sent to earth in a baby body with all of his memories blocked by the magic of his uncles and aunts. A God’s name.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>Hephrodistus…</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It echoes on his mind as if spoken by a thousand voices, one after the other.</p>
<p>Hephrodistus, son of Hephaestus and Aphrodite; brother to...too many siblings; grandson of Zeus, Hera, Dione, and more; nephew to another bunch of people; friends with many more.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>God of Fire, Creativity and Pleasure…</em>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>Him, Anthony Stark, CEO of Stark Industries, most sought bachelor for the last who knows how many years, son of Howard and Maria Stark, adopted apparently, is also a God of the Greek pantheon.</p>
<p>And with that last tidbit about himself, Tony, Hephrodistus, passed out from the pain.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Restart</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Tony returns from Afghanistan and takes a short break to breath in peace and regain his bearings.</p>
<p>Deciding to breaks the ice by calling a press conference early in the morning during his first day back at SI, he prepares to take the company in a new direction. By its horns, if needed.</p>
<p>But before that, he sits in his office, hacks his own damn computer, and uncovers secrets that shake his worldview.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you for the kudos!</p>
<p>Damn I'm on fire with this story. I don't know were my muses were the past months, but it's good to be back.</p>
<p>Enjoy!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After who knows how long, Tony wakes up. He takes a look around, shocked by the fire surrounding him, and a little worried; until <em>Hephrodistus</em> remembers who he is and takes pleasure in the flames licking his skin, and he absorbs strength from them, recovering some energies.</p>
<p>Everything makes more sense now, after getting an update of <em>the dreams</em>, that are actually his memories, and understanding more as they had sound this time and that game his more context to what he saw.</p>
<p>Standing, he tears the pieces of armour off of him with an afterthought and turns around, taking in the sight of the destruction. A devious smirk takes over his face, “Gran would be proud of this mess,” he mumbles and walks away while the flames keep caressing his skin and he enjoys it, but the call of a strong magical presence takes his attention away and he follows the trail to the opening of the cave. He looks at it with a grimace and distaste, but walks inside nonetheless.</p>
<p>Thankfully the magical presence resides just by the entrance, under the debris that he caused to fall… all over Raza.</p>
<p>Making use of his returned strength he takes the stones away and finds a hand, the gem in the ring sitting on the dead body shines with restrained power when he swipes the dust from it with a finger and he looks at it with curiosity. The metal is so obviously not from this planet that he wonders how it ended on earth anyway. He pries it from the cold hand of the corpse and twirls it on his fingers, smiling at it.</p>
<p>Tony . . . Hephrodistus . . . fuck! He’s going to go by Tony for the time being or he’s going to get confused and make a mistake, he knows it.</p>
<p>Tony fights with little to no effort the consciousness from the ring that tries to wrap its coils around his mind, trying to create a bond between them to keep itself safe. Tony laughs, releasing the control on his power over fire and burning the ring until the consciousness writes and begs for mercy, so he relents the outpour of heat and feels the energy around the ring sign in relief, but only a little since the metal still burns a bright red and lets Tony know it won’t try again, it’ll behave, it can be nice.</p>
<p>The mind of the ring retreats then, like a kicked puppy hiding to lick its wounds, and the square red gem stop shining so brightly around it as Tony rolls his eyes and puts the thing on the back pocket of his jeans after submerging it in a bit of water to cool it down. He’s about to turn and leave just as he came, but caughts sight of Yinsen’s body first.</p>
<p>Frowning and rubbing at the throb in his chest, Tony makes a decision on the heat of the moment and walks out, looking around until he finds a few tools he can make do with and starts searching around the outside of the cave until he finds a spot to start digging. Many hours later, he arranges the body of Yinsen as best he can since the rigour mortis took over a long time ago, and lets his friend rest on the depth of the hole, saying a few words for him, promising Yinsen to make the Ten Ring pay for what they’ve done, for taking Yinsen’s life, Yinsen’s family’s lives, and even months of theirs.</p>
<p>As he nailed down a simple board with Ho Yinsen written on it and stood over his friend’s tomb, he promised himself and his friend that he won’t rest until he finds every one of the bastards working for the Ten Rings and <em>destroys them and anyone who works with them</em>.</p>
<p>He will find every one of their bases, burn them to the ground, and salt the earth once the coils have cooled down. For his own peace of mind and for the rest of the people suffering under the bastards’ control.</p>
<p>With a final swipe of his hand over the earth, a flare of golden light settles over the grave as Tony gives Yinsen’s soul a token in the form of his blessing, to help his friend’s soul have a smoother journey to the afterlife. As he staggers down the mountain, Tony finally gets some rest once he’s put a good distance between himself and the cave that is his new source of nightmares for the newfound future.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Rhodey, bless his brother, finds him the next day after he escapes as Tony stumbles down a dune. Tony laughs and screams in joy when the choppers fly close by and hug Rhodey when the man runs to him looking as relieved as Tony feels.</p>
<p>“How was the fun-vee?” Rhodey asks breathlessly once he takes a good look at Tony and makes him laugh some more. “Next time, you ride with me, okay?”</p>
<p>Tony nods, exhaustion only letting him do so much, and he takes Rhodey’s hand to help him stand up once more without shame. He doesn’t even have the strength enough to summon such feelings. Fire may be his element, but his body is weak yet.</p>
<p>They get him away then, patching him up once they reach the Air Force’s base, with Rhodey hovering like the mother hen he usually turns into every time Tony gets hurt. They get two bullets out of him, one from his right forearm and another one from his abdomen. He never felt them and he blinks dumbly at the bloody pieces of metal as they are taken away, soon after falling asleep as the anaesthesia finishes working on his spent body.</p>
<p>Thankfully, most of the time flying back home he was asleep, only waking up an hour before landing, so he has enough time to get the scrubs off and a clean suit on him. Landing in another Air Force base is such a relief that when he finally caught sight of the beautiful sight of Happy and Pepper waiting for him he almost cries. Pepper’s red eyes observe him when he gets down the USAF’s plane with a watery and happy smile, they joke around, he gets her angry, and Happy smiles pleased that everything is as usual once more. As it should always be.</p>
<p>The Tony Stark of three months ago would have fought until he got his way, buy cheeseburgers and surely get a press conference and cancel the weapons manufacturing right after. This Tony Stark though—the God living as a mortal man—accepts Pepper forcing their way to the hospital with a warm smile and even more warmth spreading in his chest, he accepts Rhodey’s hovering, Happy’s pats on the back, and the orders from the doctors with a smiling face and nods. He does as they want him to and returns back home, takes a few days off, eats, sleeps, takes his medicine, accepts the visits and worried glances from his friends and keeps going. He answers the many questions and puts up a facade of someone tired, needing time off, stressed and in need of just thinking and processing what happened. Which in part is right, but also so much more.</p>
<p>The first time Obadiah visits his magic jumps to the front and almost lashes against his will, putting Tony in alert since that can only mean one thing and the thought of it terrifies him. No, surely, it’s just the leftover paranoia acting up because, Obie, <em>his Godfather</em>, couldn’t possibly be a danger to him…right? With a will honed over thousands of years of dealing with curious and unexpected reactions from his magic, Tony keeps it in check and doesn’t let it turn the man to ashes. If his magic feels threatened by Obadiah there must be a reason, but he needs proof first—and he’ll get them if there is any.</p>
<p>By the time Obie’s ready to leave, Tony is <em>exhausted</em>. After hours of talking about Afghanistan, his kidnapping, Obie’s worries, the board’s desire for him to take a time off, and no, he’ll have two weeks off at most, not damn months thank-you-very-much. He came out of kidnapping after three months with only two bullets wounds, not emaciated and traumatized.</p>
<p>Two weeks of rest is just fine, not that he actually needs it since his body’s healing rate is over the moon already after his magic completely awakened and had time to recover during the nap he had when flying back with Rhodey. The many scrapes and bruises are already fading and it’s only been less than 24 hours since he had something nice to eat and a good rest, and the bullet wounds will disappear in another day or so.</p>
<p>That first day, Rhodey and Pepper took their leave late in the afternoon, after making sure he ate and was in his pyjamas. He felt like a child treated like that, but was unable to voice the discomfort since they were only doing it because they care for him and it was nice feeling taken cared-of by his friends; indulging in that feeling for a few days won’t kill him, so he let them be and obeyed while acting like the tired human man he’s supposed to be after such an ordeal.</p>
<p>But when they are gone, Tony gets the covers off of him and struts down to the workshop and opens the glass wall feeling, finally, like returning back home. He breathes in deeply, take stock of the surrounding room, and gives the code for JARVIS to come out of lockdown with a loud and clear voice, tearing up when the English accented voice of his AI finally greets him.</p>
<p>“Jarvis,” Tony says swallowing thickly and blinking away the prickle from his eyes, “Daddy’s back,” he says with a laugh too, patting DUM-E and U who also come out of their charging stations, whirring with an undertone of worry reaching his ears now that he's able to sense more than common humans can.</p>
<p>He’s had his suspicions before coming and confirming it, but <em>seeing</em> them and recognising the aura surrounding their chassis’ is another story altogether. The clear sheen around them, that any other living being has, is bright and warm and makes him sigh with content knowing that he’s the one who made that, and that they’re fine; they’re his children, and no one, not even Zeus and the rest of his sycophants bootlickers can take his ability to <em>give life</em> from him, even after binding his magic under layers and layers of seals.</p>
<p>“Welcome back, Sir,” JARVIS greets him over the noise of the bots dancing around Tony. “What can I do for you?” He asks him, starting the computers and bringing the workshop to life without even being asked to.</p>
<p>Tony smiles, taps his chest and focuses his thoughts on the most important thing he needs to deal with at the moment. “I need to build a better heart.”</p>
<p>A second of silence and JARVIS speaks, “I’m not sure I follow, Sir.”</p>
<p>Tony smirked at the camera in the corner, “Give me a scan and you’ll see.”</p>
<p>There is a longer silence this time as JARVIS prepares the machines to scan him and Tony takes his shirt off, sitting on a chair and waiting for the 3D scanner to do its job. In the holographic table to his side, a Tony appears and JARVIS focuses his attention to the attachment in his chest. Another monitor shows lots of information as JARVIS compiles it.</p>
<p>“What were your intentions for this device?”</p>
<p>As Tony explains and asks for advice, the two of them fall into the companionable banter Tony oh so missed during the past three months. Yinsen was good company, but JARVIS has known him for decades and Tony has coded into him even sarcasm, that JARVIS uses like a champ after so many hours of practice with him in the lab.</p><hr/>
<p>He doesn’t notice that is daylight already outside until JARVIS announces Pepper’s arrival in the mansion. Tony raised his head and squinted at the light getting into the room by the small windows on the ceiling and behind the cars, letting the schematics for the new reactor return to the folder.</p>
<p>He walks into the living room to find Pepper watching the news with a tablet in her hands and a frown on her face. But when he sits next to her and takes the cup of coffee from the table, coming into her range of sight, she jumps and turns her startled gaze at him.</p>
<p>“Tony!” She clutches her chest.</p>
<p>“Morning, Pep!” He smiles at her and takes a sip, humming as the coffee runs down his throat. “Sweet physics, how I missed this.”</p>
<p>“Morning, Tony,” Pepper smiles, “You’re welcome.”</p>
<p>“So, what have you got for me today?”</p>
<p>Tony lets the empty carton cup on the side as Pepper hands him a bunch of papers to sign. He frowns at them and makes a reminder in the back of his head to get on with the improvements for JARVIS’ coding so they can hack into the NY servers of SI to scan who and where is the mole selling his weapons to thugs.</p>
<p>They spend the morning that way, signing papers, approving new projects, deciding what galas are worth attending or meetings are important for Pepper to attend while Tony is taking his short break. Then they have Italian for lunch and Pepper leaves to take care of some other things, with the promise of returning early the next day.</p>
<p>Obadiah left for NY the previous day and Rhodey for the Air Force, so Tony is free once more to return to his workshop and continue working on his projects. His finishes the improved arc reactor, letting JARVIS start the production of the needed parts, and opens a new project for the Mark II suit. All while his magic moves in the air around him, JARVIS scanning it and him practising control.</p>
<p>The reactor won’t be ready for a few more days and he works—and gets used to the shorter times of sleep needed—bettering the armour he developed in the Afghan cave, doing wonders for the design now that he has access to more and better materials, along with the interactive holographic screens, and JARVIS.</p>
<p>Pepper visits every day and gets him updated on the goings-on of SI and Obadiah, together they ignore the news that are going crazy about his lack of appearance and make wild theories about why that is so. She helps him when the arc reactor is ready, putting it on with an amusingly scrunched face that he laughs at.</p>
<p>It’s a funny moment—not that Pepper would agree with him—and then the taste of coconut attacks him with renewed force. Pepper is understandably reticent in touching the reactor keeping him alive—or his chest in general, but as he told her, he doesn’t have anyone else and if anything, Pepper is the person he trusts the most. With his magic reacting badly to Obadiah and Rhodey away and at work, Tony only has her. Only trusts her. And, yes, Happy is also there for him if he needs him, but she has smaller hands.</p>
<p>After that, things are just more of the same. Pepper takes his mornings away, Obadiah calls in the afternoons for updates, Rhodey also texts any other day, and Tony works the rest of the time.</p>
<p>Since his upgrade from simple, squishy, mortal Tony Stark; to stronger, more resilient, immortal God; Tony doesn’t only has more hours free to do as he wants since he works on a schedule of three to five hours of sleep needed to feel well rested every day, he’s also very sure that his IQ has raised by a few numbers too, which becomes very obvious when he starts checking on JARVIS’ coding—alongside the AI, of course—and finds himself noticing not just a few, but a lot of things he feels he can improve to help his youngest grow.</p>
<p>He thought he had a good grasp in programming before, but now that he’s also able to use the Allspeak and his mind works faster and smoother, Tony finds himself even finding small little errors and redundancies that he never noticed before. He talks about them with JARVIS, and together they work on fixing and adding to the coding that will be implemented next time Tony shuts down his private server to do an in-depth maintenance.</p>
<p>He hates doing that, since his home and all the security measures are run by JARVIS; and even if it is for fifteen minutes, after Afghanistan, the last thing he wants to feel is vulnerable in his own home.</p>
<p>So for a while all they do is plan, fix things, improve them, get the materials for the production of the new armour, continue working with Pepper, and try to avoid too many encounters with Obadiah; while Tony keeps working on his magic and getting a good handle on it, as he had before. He extends that phase of things for as long as two weeks, but by then he’s grasping at straws and feeling ready to blow at anything if he spends another second cooped up inside the mansion. So, he goes out and parties and drinks and dances and makes out and… returns home alone when his mood sours because the woman looked horrified at his new scars and arc reactor for seven seconds too long.</p>
<p>After two weeks, it’s almost time for his return to SI, but he doesn’t really feel up for it after the previous night events. He’s never been self-conscious, he’s Tony Fucking Stark, and he’s also lived as a God for many years before Tony, but it was still rude the way the woman acted and it got him upset. So, instead of immediately returning to work with SI, he tells Obie to take his post for a few more days because he has to make maintenance to JARVIS and will return to work the next Monday instead of in the middle of the week.</p>
<p>He has a private plane, so he doesn’t have to worry about rescheduling tickets or some other such nonsense, but Pepper still doesn’t like it when he messes around with her schedule and they discuss over lunch all the meetings he’ll have to attend the next week to make it up for the lost time. He doesn’t like making things harder for her, really, but that’s just what happens when he tells her about arranging a press conference first thing on Monday morning, and Pepper is so used to his sudden change of mind that she simply glares at him for the short notice, but agrees to it soon enough.</p>
<p>Just on that first day, after talking with the press, he’ll have to assist to thirteen other meetings. The board meeting is something he can’t miss, more so since he’s going to throw a big bomb at them early that morning and needs to make damage control afterwards as Obie won’t know about it either. Next, he has scheduled other meetings, between which is an agent of SHIELD that <em>insists</em> on talking with him for some reason and Pepper believes it to be important so he accepts. He just hopes the agent isn’t going to ask for funding or he’ll be sorely disappointed. Howard did more than enough when he and aunt Peggy founded the agency and Tony doesn’t have a lick of interest in becoming a spy or whatever they want out of him.</p>
<p>That Thursday, Tony warns Pepper about the maintenance and she leaves without much fuss. He always made everyone believe that making maintenance is something that takes him a lot of time since he does everything alone, instead of the mere fifteen minutes it actually takes for it. He just tells JARVIS to ignore incoming calls and other things during those days so Tony can focus on projects, and late during his last day of peace he does the actual work of maintenance and comes back up to see the light and interact with people and answer to any need from SI.</p>
<p>That’s just what he does for the next few days. He fixes the last of JARVIS’ coding on a backup sheet and prepares the small USB with the hack ready to create a secret entrance for him to access the information of SI remotely and search for the mole. And of course, he also continues working on the Mark II and retraining his magic control.</p><hr/>
<p>On Monday morning, Tony doesn’t even need JARVIS to wake him up as he’s up and shining by 5AM. After four hours of sleep, he feels completely rested and ready to face the day, or maybe even several days if needed. He takes a shower and dresses while going over the plans that he and JARVIS prepared for the last two weeks, that he has more than memorized but is always good to second, triple or maybe check for the thirtieth time.</p>
<p>Dressed in a three-piece suit, he gets on his Audi Spyder and drives to Stark Industries, where he’s welcomed by a surprised Pepper.</p>
<p>“Tony,” she says blinking confused. “The conference isn’t scheduled until eight. Why are you here so early?” She hands him the small stack of paperwork she had on her and follows as he starts walking to his office.</p>
<p>“Morning, Pep,” he gives her his brightest smile and enjoys how she reacts to it by lowering her head to hide a blush and fidgets with her empty hands.</p>
<p>He doesn’t do more than that though, recognising now that trying to go for something more than a good friendship with her will be a bad call. He’s never been able to keep to a serious relationship with anyone, much less a monogamous one, and he can accept he isn’t a good partner material, so he’d feel like a dick if he gives her the wrong idea, because he knows that a woman like her will want all the she-bang; a stable relationship, monogamy, security, and most probably a future where they marry and have kids. That is most certainly not him and not something he can offer; he’s lived for too long to fool himself with the idea of a single partner and a stable happy family.</p>
<p>“There are a lot of things I have and want to do today, but even if I tried, I couldn’t sleep more. So, here we are. I’m going to stay at the office for a while. I need to get a few last-minute things ready for the vultures-”</p>
<p>She looks worried then, maybe because he never told her what he’s going to tell to the journalist during this impromptu conference, but he hopes she doesn’t quit on him because of the risky move he’s about to take on later. He already thought of the best way to counteract the critical decline of SI’s stocks, that are sure to dive like a cormorant bird after fish, when he gives his announcement.</p>
<p>“Tony, please talk to me. What are you going to say at the press-”</p>
<p>“Don’t worry, Pep.” Tony puts his hands on her shoulders for a second and looks her directly in the eyes, hopefully sharing his own confidence with her. “I have it all under control. You just have to wait and see. I’m about to blow everyone’s minds,” and with one last blinding smile, Tony turns her around and locks the door to his office behind her. His smile instantly vanishing once he’s alone.</p>
<p>“It’s showtime,” he whispers coldly to himself and walks with determination to his desk, sits, puts the USB on the table close by, and tries to unlock the computer by the usual means.</p>
<p>Even if Obadiah is the chairman to the board, Tony is still the CEO and has the password to the computer in his office… or so he thought. When he tried to unlock some files inside it, a red warning told him that the password was incorrect and his heart sank. He wanted to believe so strongly that Obadiah Stane, his godfather, his father’s best friend and the man that he grew up seeing all the time since as family, was a nice man, that this first discovery of secretsㅡand there shouldn’t be secrets regarding the company between themㅡwas highly upsetting.</p>
<p>His magic was right after all, he thought bitterly as a result. Obie’s is hiding something from him.</p>
<p>With a sigh, he plugs the USB and waits patiently for his program to do its job. It was a matter of seconds until the screen showed him the green light and Tony started searching for the deals signed off with the dreaded number he remembered so clearly, unable to wait more until the device finishes copying all of the files available in the hard drive. The USM-11676 code, for a Stark produced bomb, greeted him after a few minutes, along with the many other products sold to some kind of fake company—Tony’s certainly never heard of them before and that’s saying something—and the sale was signed off by none other than Obadiah himself.</p>
<p>Tony gritted his teeth and with more control than he felt capable off continued searching in the archives of the computer. He found so many other documentations of weapons, sold to many other companies that he had never heard of before, that he started getting flames to appear over his exposed skin, a clear sign that it was time for him to take a deep breath and make for a break. He poured himself a drink, not giving a second thought to the fact that it wasn’t even six in the morning yet, and he drank the entire glass of scotch in one go, barely feeling the burning of it running down his throat. Alcohol just doesn’t do anything for him anymore since his reawakened Godhood.</p>
<p>After a few deep breaths and half of the tumbler sitting in his stomach, affecting him as much as half a carton of apple juice but getting him to relax at least a little, Tony sits in front of the screen once more and reopens the archives, starting to search for any sign of Stane’s betrayal in another folder that may show him how bad he fucked up in trusting the man.</p>
<p>
  <em>Obadiah Stane, you have deceived us...the price to kill Tony Stark has just gone up…</em>
</p>
<p>The words coming out of the man speaking, <em>the terrorist</em>, the <em>Ten Ring’s</em> man, is Dari. Tony’s mind supplies him with the information, unnecessarily since Yinsen taught him a little of it, while teaching him Arabic and Urdu too. The man is also one of the few who were killed in the first explosion in the cave when they tried to open the door while Yinsen worked on putting together the armour around Tony, he remembers with satisfaction.</p>
<p>But, none of those little titbits matter.</p>
<p>What really infuriates him. What makes Tony’s anger boil like a coiling basilisk ready to strike with its mortally poisonous bite. What makes him lose control of his magic and fire, burning the mouse under his hand before he can react and take it away, are the words. Those damning, hated, terrible words.</p>
<p><em>Obadiah Stane, you have deceived us…</em> the man says in Dari and the Allspeak translates each word for him in his head.</p>
<p><em>The price to kill Tony Stark has just gone up…</em> <em>The price to kill Tony Stark… The price to kill…</em></p>
<p>The phrase repeats over and over again in his head like a broken disk. Each time making him understand less. Obadiah Stane <em>paid</em> the Ten Rings to . . . <strong><em>he paid them</em></strong>.</p>
<p>
  <strong>
    
  </strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>
    <em>Obadiah Stane PAID a bunch of terrorists to KILL HIM !!!</em>
  </strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He loses control of his magic for a second, or an eternity, he isn’t sure, but when he returns to his sense, everything is <em>shaking</em> and the glass windows behind him are shattered and leaving the air rush into the room freely.</p>
<p>Thankfully, the USB finished making a copy of everything a long time ago, because there is a big halo surrounding Tony where everything was burnt to a crisp. The only thing surviving his little outburst is said USB as he protected it before leaving his house to make it invisible for anyone but him, untraceable and unbreakable. Good thing he always thinks ahead…</p>
<p>He takes a lotus position in the middle of the scorched floor and meditates until the shaking stops and his magic sits calmly back inside him. He opens his eyes and a wave of his hand has the shattered windows returning to their former unblemished position covering the office from the exposure to outside elements. Another movement of his hand and his brows furrow as it is quite harder turning mere ashes into a chair, a desk, a computer and some other nick-knacks that littered his surrounding a while ago. Good thing he knows by heart the components of a simple computer, otherwise rebuilding it from scratch would have been simply impossible. Ah, the wonders of magic.</p>
<p>Summoning clothes from his home, Tony is clothed once more in a flash of golden light, and a final wave of his hand puts the finishing touch on the room by making the scorching marks and the smell disappear.</p>
<p>Finally, he takes a look at the clock on the wall and determines that only half an hour has passed since he lost himself to his anger and he sighs relieved. With magical outbursts, you never know, and it’s been a while since he had one, it almost makes him feel embarrassed with himself. Well, there is no point in crying over spilt milk. Back to work.</p>
<p>Shit…</p>
<p>Tony passes a hand over his hair and walks to the couch, slumping on it and starting to go over his plans for the press conference and the subsequent meeting with the board once more. What a mess… and fucking Obadiah Stane, the traitor!</p>
<p>But he will pay.</p>
<p>
  <em>Oh, how will he pay…</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>
    <em>And Tony will enjoy each second of it.</em>
  </strong>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>So, any thoughts?</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Revelations</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The conference takes place and shakes the world. Obadiah is dealt with, with the help of Coulson. Tony attends more meetings than he's ever done before, he's sure of it. Jarvis gets an 'upgrade' and Tony feels proud of his kid. Mark II turns soon into Mark III, just in time to kick some terrorist behinds.</p>
<p>But, months passed by and he never revealed his biggest secret to his friends as he was so busy, so of course, Pepper finds out in the worst of ways and soon after Tony is explaining to his closest friends that he's a God. Cue in a lot of gawking, questions and explanations.</p>
<p>Hopefully, they aren't committing him to the madhouse any time soon.</p>
<p>Did he ever get those presents for his friends? He should buy them something really nice after this...</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Err... I broke a nail writing this, wow.</p>
<p>Don't worry, my nails are shit anyway, they chip and brake all the time.</p>
<p>So, a new chapter. Enjoy!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The start of Tony’s first week back at SI was horrific, but thankfully he was more than prepared to deal with most of it.</p>
<p>For the interview he knew he needed time to say his piece, otherwise, Obadiah and everyone else who didn’t like the direction of his speech would try to stop him. With that in mind, he arranged for Happy and some other of his favourite guys to be around, keeping others at bay, cutting any interruptions and such. They were surprised about his decision but he pays their checks so they didn’t have much else to say after giving him a curious glance.</p>
<p>And at the hour of the truth, Tony walked up to the podium, laid down the rules and started talking when they accepted his request of keeping the questions for the end.</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <em>Everyone here knows about my last three months out of commission. And I’m sure all of you are curious about what happened, how I’ve escaped and every little detail about it. So, I’m here to tell you - all of you - the dirty details of my escape from the Ten Rings.</em>
  </p>
  <p>
    <em>And, who are the Ten Rings you might be asking yourselves? Let me tell you…</em>
  </p>
  <p>
    <em>Three or so months ago, if you asked me about them, I’d tell you ‘I don’t know’ or maybe ‘I have more important things to care about’ and that’s true. In my mind, at the time, I’m sure there would have been at least a dozen other things I’d care more about than a bunch of terrorists laying waste to someplace on the other half of the planet, you know? They would have been the kind of news I’d take a look at on the TV and think ‘there are many agencies around the world with the abilities and weapons needed to deal with them, it’s not my problem’ and put it out of my mind with a couple of thoughts used to paint it all just fine in my head and make myself forget about it. But… the thing is…</em>
  </p>
  <p>
    <em>The thing is I’d be wrong then, as much as I’d be wrong now, because things are much worse than I was led to believe some months ago while I happily sat and lived my life through rose-tinted glasses.</em>
  </p>
  <p>
    <em>The Ten Rings are a bunch of people, terrorist really as there is no better name for them than that since all they do is terrorize people. The Ten Rings are a bunch of people who speak Urdu, Mongolian, Dari, Pashto, Arabic, Farsi, Russian and who knows how many other languages, so actually I don’t know how many people are really involved with this terrorist group, but what I know is that they have my weapons.</em>
  </p>
  <p>
    <em>Yes… you are asking yourselves now, with no little worry and outrage, how? Right?</em>
  </p>
  <p>
    <em>I asked myself the same when they took me out of the cave they were keeping me in at, after torturing me for three days, and I saw row after row after row of Stark Industries weapons and I asked myself with not little outrage: <span class="u">How do they have my weapons?</span></em>
  </p>
  <p>
    <em>I’m not going to lie to you, the sight was both terrifying and an eye-opener at the same time.</em>
  </p>
  <p>
    <em>The rose-coloured glasses finally flying off of me in one swift swept.</em>
  </p>
  <p>
    <em>I realized then that I wasn’t doing as well as I believed. The system is broken. There’s no accountability whatsoever. I’ve lost the way. Stark Industries has lost its way. And I-I-</em>
  </p>
  <p>
    <em>I need to re-evaluate things.</em>
  </p>
  <p>
    <em>My HEART is telling me that I have more to offer the planet than things that blow up!</em>
  </p>
  <p>
    <em>If this Ten Rings have my weapons and used them to seed chaos and terror, then who else? Whom else is out there, using Stark technology - meant to help America - for their own nefarious purposes? And more importantly… How did they obtain said weapons in the first place?</em>
  </p>
  <p>
    <em>I don’t have all the answers yet, but I can tell you - PROMISE you - one thing. I’m standing up and saying right here, right now, NO MORE!</em>
  </p>
  <p>
    <em>As of this second, effective immediate, we are freezing the sale of all Stark weaponry, worldwide. And I’ll work personally with whatever governmental agency needs my assistance from this day onwards, to recover the weapons that are in the hands of thugs and find those guilty of selling SI products to people not meant to have them, and most importantly, make them pay for all the suffering these terrorists have caused for who knows how long.</em>
  </p>
  <p>
    <em>In the coming months, Mr Stane and I will set a new course for Stark Industries. ‘Tomorrow Today’ has always been our slogan. It’s time we try to live up to it.</em>
  </p>
  <p>
    <em>I saw young Americans killed by the very weapons I created to defend them and protect them. I was kidnapped by the Ten Rings and asked to create even more weapons than they already had to further their wilful destruction. I found out that someone out there is betraying what Stark Industries and I stand for, behind my back...</em>
  </p>
  <p>
    <em>NO MORE!</em>
  </p>
  <p>
    <em>I will not stand up for this. Not for any of it.</em>
  </p>
  <p>
    <em>I stand in front of all of you right now assuming the guilt of letting this problem develop beyond what it should have. And I promise you all, I will help fix my errors and SI’s mistakes. I will find and deal with those responsible for selling my weapons, and those using them when they shouldn’t have them, to cause pain, fear and destruction, with extreme prejudice. Each and every last one of them are going to pay for what they’ve done!</em>
  </p>
  <p>
    <em>… and maybe, one day, those that have suffered for my overconfidence, misplaced trust, and blindness, will find it in their hearts to forgive me for letting Stark Industries become something that it never should have while I was supposed to look after it and stop this kind of things from happening to start with.</em>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>It was an outraged crowd, for varying reasons, that started throwing questions at him after that bombshell. Thankfully, the entire thing was being transmitted on many live channels and the press won't be able to thwart his words and paint him in an even worse light than usual. He asked Pepper specifically for that and she was good on delivering what he wanted.</p>
<p>The questions afterwards weren’t anything that he wasn’t expecting, they were over all of the possibilities with JARVIS during the previous weeks to be ready for just this day and it pays off as Tony answers all of them without problems.</p>
<p>He’s satisfied with the results and walks away from the podium once everyone is satisfied with their answers. His next appointment is in the biggest conference room, with the entire board, and that’s where he goes to. He isn’t surprised about finding Agent Coulson already there when he walks in. Or Obadiah surrounded by a bunch of agents and looking very serious and not at all comfortable with the sudden change of pace.</p>
<p>Tony is followed inside by the rest of the board muttering between themselves. He completely ignores Stane when the man tries to talk to him as he walks around the table to sit by the head. Just as he also ignores the board members when they start bombarding him with questions. He merely sits on his chair, fiddles with his phone for a moment, and finally, the video he found in the computer starts to play on the projector at his back a moment later, successfully silencing the entire room in a second flat.</p>
<p>Of course, since the board members hardly have access to his ability to Allspeak, they need a translator to write down in a corner the words being spoken by the terrorist in the video.</p>
<p>By the end of it, all of them look at Stane in horror, while the man himself sits on the chair with his head on his hands, clearly defeated.</p>
<p>It comes as no surprise to Tony when the board is then quick to agree to kick Stane from the company with a never heard of agreement of all the members, after Tony presents all the proof he has about Stane’s guilt of dealing their weapons under the table and knowingly sending Tony to his own death trap.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>The press conference and the full board meeting was just the beginning of his day. He had another twelve meetings waiting for him that day and he arrived back at home exhausted but overall satisfied with the results.</p>
<p>The meeting with Agent Coulson continued just after the board members left the room and was the most interesting of the bunch by far.</p>
<p>“It seems that in the end, I wasn’t as much needed as you made it seem, Mr Stark,” Coulson says, taking the offered seat in front of Tony once they are alone but for his agents and Tony’s bodyguards.</p>
<p>Tony snorts, “Stane still put some of my guys under commission for fifteen minutes with the technology he took from the SI vaults without the proper paperwork. If not for you and the rest of the agents, he could have done worse.”</p>
<p>“Tony-” Stane tries to talk but Tony merely rolls his eyes and tries to ignore the man. “It was just business-”</p>
<p>“For you, maybe,” Tony sneers in his godfather direction. “And I’m dealing with you too in the same way here, Stane. But don’t worry, things will get pretty personal soon… at court,” he sneers at the man and motions for the agents to finally get him out of the room, who do as asked when Coulson nods at them.</p>
<p>“You did the right thing, Mr Stark,” Coulson says when the agents are gone and they sit calmly once more. “But I still have a few things I’d like to discuss with you in private…”</p>
<p>Tony nods and waves at the bodyguards to leave. Happy gives him a look before walking entirely out though, letting Tony know he’ll be just out of the door if he needs him for anything. Maybe Tony has given his friends too many things to worry about in the last couple of months, he should get them some presents…</p>
<p>Turning his smiling face from Happy to Coulson, both wait for the door to click shut and sit in silence while the agent slides a small white card in front of Tony.</p>
<p>“I’m with the Strategic Homeland-”</p>
<p>“You’re SHIELD,” Tony cuts short his monotonous explanation and nods. Personally, Tony hates the long obnoxious name, but what can he expect from an organization funded and directed by his father, aunt Peggy and… who was the other guy? Well, whatever. Unimportant. The important thing is that he knows about SHIELD, not thanks to his father though. Tony had to find about a lot of Howard’s dirty secrets by himself, without warning, when he took over the company once he became of age to do so. “What do you guys want from me?”</p>
<p>“I need to debrief you on the circumstances of your escape, Mr Stark. Director Fury would like to know if the interesting images we caught on our satellites, and some other devices, are what he thinks they are. But, more importantly, we’re here to help, Mr Stark.”</p>
<p>Tony hums long and extended, taking the card from the table and twirling it on his hands for a moment before answering. “You want to know specifically <em>how</em> I escaped, don’t you? I seem to remember something about SHIELD working to prevent world threats and the like, in the files Howard left in the family’s vault.”</p>
<p>Coulson nods at him. If he’s surprised about Tony’s knowledge, when he isn’t supposed to know anything about the agency, he doesn’t show it.</p>
<p>“If it’s not too much to ask for…” the agent says it in pretty words, but Tony is very sure the man will pester him as long as it takes, until he shares the information with SHIELD.</p>
<p>Agent Coulson has the face of a stubborn and patient man. An annoying mix. He should know, he’s just the same. Stubborn, that is.</p>
<p>“They wanted me to build weapons for him, I said as much during the conference…” Tony trails off, waiting for the man to nod. “So, of course, to build something I needed materials. I denied them in the beginning, thus they forced my hand. Then they showed me the outside, bragging about having everything I’d ever need to build them the Jericho. So, in the end, I acquiesce to their strongly-worded plea. I obviously knew they’d never let me go, at least not alive, so I put up a front. I said, ‘Okay, I’ll do it’ but I didn’t, not really. Instead of the Jericho missile they wanted, I’d built a suit of armour to protect me while I fought my way out of there and made them explode to kingdom come with the same weapons they so viciously hoarded around the entrance of their cave.”</p>
<p>“And it worked,” Coulson whispered, <em>almost</em> sounding awed, but his face didn’t betray him in any way.</p>
<p>“Here I am,” Tony opened his arms with a cocky smile. His act talking for him.</p>
<p>Coulson looks at him for a moment, “Here you are… Moving entirely unimpeded for someone who just two weeks ago had two bullets taken out of him.”</p>
<p>Tony blinks at him, surprised but not really, that the man knew so much about his situation when only Rhodey and the doctor who treated him should know about those. But smiling, Tony weaves his magic over his skin without much effort and lifts the hem of his shirt where a very red wound was covered by some gauze, that he took off for a moment for the agent’s sake.</p>
<p>“I took some painkillers in the morning, otherwise I’d hardly be able to move so easily, Agent.”</p>
<p>At this, Coulson’s face breaks the stoic facade for a second, and Tony smiles. The conversation continues for a long hour with Coulson showing him a few satellite pictures and asking him to explain what he’s seeing, which is mostly Tony releasing his trademark golden-blue fire to burn everything to Tartarus and back. Not that he says as much. He invents excuses for it, untruths but not less possible, and fills all the blanks for the agent without faltering once.</p>
<p>They can’t extend the talk for too long, he has still too many meetings, so Coulson leaves with another meeting booked for the following week. Apparently, he still has important things to talk with Tony about, but is also as madly busy as him.</p><hr/>
<p>Between meetings and an angry Pepper, Tony barely had much time for anything but work during that first week. He returned to the mansion each day so exhausted that he barely stepped into the workshop for a few hours before he was tiredly seeking for a comfortable surface to lay on for a few hours of rest.</p>
<p>A week turned into two, and suddenly, months passed by between meetings and developing the suit in the workshop in his free time. It took longer that he’d like, but in the end, he avoided SI from taking too hard a blow from his decisions and thanks to his new and ingenious ideas for the company. Lots of people left during this uncertain period, but, the remaining few were the ones to trust anyway, and as Tony shared his ideas for the future, he got their unwavering loyalty as he took SI to new heights in the following months as he delivered everything he promised.</p>
<p>By the time the Mark II suit of armour was ready for the first general testing, all the parts present, it was September and he sported many bruises suffered along the previous weeks, during the partial tests of each new piece of the armour finished.</p>
<p>“Ready, boys?” Tony looks from DUM-E with the fire extinguisher, to U still holding the camera, while JARVIS finishes the calibration of the suit until the last piece gets into position.</p>
<p>“Sir, I strongly suggest you rethink-”</p>
<p>“We’ve been over this the entire evening J-”</p>
<p>“I’m only ever concerned for your health-”</p>
<p>“J, do I have to check your coding again? I think I told you I’m immortal, but if you’re having memory problems then I will-”</p>
<p>“I have <em>no</em> memory problems,” the AI answers quickly and with a petulant tilt on his voice that wasn’t there before the last maintenance Tony did to his code for sure.</p>
<p>The bots shake their pincers anxiously next to Tony, waiting for anything to happen, and they aren’t disappointed when he just launches on the suit out of the room by the garage entrance. Propulsors blaring to life and easily lifting him off the ground with the proper strength after painstakingly proving different proportions of energy used in them, much to JARVIS’ displeasure and concern that he makes Tony privy to as the AI continues complaining; Tony soars on the night sky of Malibu with an exclamation of joy that drowns the grumpy voice of JARVIS, enjoying the ride.</p>
<p>Adrenaline and exhilaration fill him as he flies away from the mansion, close to the water, then over the fair, up and up, making loops high between the clouds and testing the limits of his second version of the suit. Until the armour starts freezing and Tony is <em>falling!</em></p>
<p>He feels panic for all of three seconds before he remembers he’s quite literally the <em>God of Fire</em> and scoffs at himself. Heating up, the ice on the armour melts and functions reboot, JARVIS’ frantic voice joining Tony once more, and he laughs when the AI sarcastically comments about the threshold of maximum altitude already breached and <em>maybe</em> being time to return home before he freezes again.</p>
<p>Returning back to the mansion, Tony tries to land smoothly on the rooftop, but the armour is too heavy and he crashes through it instead, crushing the piano and passing directly down to the garage, landing right on top of…</p>
<p>Oh no, his Shelby Cobra! He loved that car…</p>
<p>The other car’s alarms blare in the room and U turns with the fire extinguisher and covers the armour in white foam for no apparent reason. Groaning, Tony lets the helmet thud against the blue chassis of the car, feeling for his beloved.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>“That was quite dangerous, Sir. Might I remind you, if the suit loses power, so does your heart,” JARVIS comments once he’s up and walking once more, the reproaching tone also new and bringing a small smile to Tony’s face.</p>
<p>The small spark of magic he added when he last worked on the coding definitely makes a big difference on his AI, more than he expected, but not unwelcome at all.</p>
<p>“Yeah, and it doesn’t have a seat belt either. A few issues: main transducer felt sluggish at plus forty altitude. Same goes for hull pressurization. I’m thinking icing might be a factor.”</p>
<p>Tony types without pause, adding to the functions of the armour and already planning for a couple of upgrades when JARVIS haven’t finished analysing the data from the last spin.</p>
<p>“The suit isn’t rated for high altitude. You’re expending eight percent power just heating and pressurizing.”</p>
<p>“Re-configure using the gold-titanium alloy from the Seraphim Tactical Satellite. It should ensure fuselage integrity to 50 thousand feet, while maintaining power-to-weight ratio.”</p>
<p>“Shall I render, utilizing proposed specifications?”</p>
<p>“Wow me.”</p>
<p>Tony sits back as JARVIS finishes rendering the image of the Mark III sometime later, making him sneer at the all-gold image.</p>
<p>“Have I ever told you about grandpa, but not-grandpa, Zeus, JARVIS?”</p>
<p>“I don’t think so, sir.”</p>
<p>“Funny story,” Tony smirks with zero amusement, “He looks a little bit like that,” he sneers once more at the image of Mark III. “All gold outside, but on the inside… a blackhole of a soul. Terrifying, powerful, a curmudgeon who wouldn’t know what fun is if it slapped him in the face, and he hates my guts because my existence reminds him that Dione actually lied to him and Aphrodite’s true father is Hades, not him. Not that it matters much, he’s still my grandfather because he sired Hephaestus.”</p>
<p>A pause, and then, “Maybe a little hot-rod red in the mix will help with your stealth, sir.” JARVIS’ voice sounds uncharacteristically frosty, but Tony snorts nonetheless and smirks at the closest camera.</p>
<p>“You know me so well, buddy.”</p>
<p>The design changes for the better when red is added and this time Tony likes it. Getting up to fetch a cup of coffee, he gets distracted on the way back by a package lying on the bench that he wasn’t expecting, because he ordered nothing. But as it says ‘from Pepper’ he opens it with curiosity and raises an eyebrow at it. It’s a glass case with the previous arc-reactor inside that says <em>‘Proof that Tony Stark has a heart’</em> and Tony laughs at it, rubbing his strangely stinging eyes…</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>
  <em>“Tonight’s Red-Hot Red Carpet is here at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, where Tony Stark’s third annual benefit for the Firefighter Family Fund has become the go-to charity gala on L.A.’s high-society calendar…”</em>
</p>
<p>Tony’s head turns sharply to the side, eyes widening as he watches the news on TV. “Shit! I forgot about the party!” He runs out of the workshop and shoots up the stairs to his bedroom two at a time. He better clean up and get dressed quickly, or Pepper is going to have his hide for arriving late for the only gala that he never fails to assist in time. Damn it all, when did it got so late?</p>
<p>After fixing the angle of the bow tie around his neck in front of the mirror, Tony grabs his phone from a pocket and walks into the workshop, heading for the Audi to take it out for the ride to the gala, “J, show me that rendering of the Mark III, please.” The engine of the car comes to life with a pleasant purring as Tony smiles at the image JARVIS sends to the phone of the paint job for the suit, “I like it. You know what to do J.” Tony speeds out of the garage with the sound of the engines coming to life as JARVIS gives him an estimate of the time for the armour to be finished.</p>
<p>The wet streets of LA, after a short rain early in the evening, extend in front of him as he speeds on the light-grey R8, he arrives just in time as Hugh Heffner is making his walk along the red carpet with his girls. Tony greets the man and walks up to a waiting Pepper.</p>
<p>“I almost thought you forgot,” Pep smiles at him, stumbling on her next words as Tony kisses her cheek and takes her arm to his elbow.</p>
<p>“I must confess, I almost did,” he smiles charmingly at her and walk them up the stairs and into the body of guests already inside the party, dancing, drinking and chatting between themselves.</p>
<p>“You’re incorrigible… but at least you arrived in time,” Pepper sighs. “No, Tony,” she says when he makes a bee line to the bar’s countertop.</p>
<p>“Yes, Tony,” he insists, but Pepper disentangles their arms.</p>
<p>“I have to take a look at a few things…”</p>
<p>“I’ll grab you a drink.”</p>
<p>“Vodka martini, dry, extra olives,” she mumbled and marched away, shaking her head but still smiling faintly.</p>
<p>Tony walked the last steps to the bar, finding Agent Coulson there and greeting the man with a firm handshake.</p>
<p>“Agent 007!” Tony exclaims at Coulson in good humour, smiling wider when the man snorts in recognition, “Fancy meeting you here. Three vodka martinis, very dry, extra olives, extra fast,” he tells to the barman and puts a bill in the tips glass.</p>
<p>“Do you have a moment, Mr Stark?”</p>
<p>“Sure, buddy,” Tony glances sideways to the agent, “Shot it at me.”</p>
<p>“Director Fury would like to talk to you directly about the Avengers Initiative-”</p>
<p>“He’s free to make an appointment with Pepper whenever I have free time,” Tony takes a sip of his drink, passing along the second to Coulson and grabbing the third.</p>
<p>To be honest, Coulson and him had many meetings before about the group SHIELD wants to put together, but he’s tired of talking about it with Coulson and maybe, <em>maybe</em>, he’ll accept a consulting with them. But, taking part with the group itself? He snorts in his head. <em>Not likely!</em></p>
<p>“Thank you,” Coulson says grabbing the offered drink. “Director Fury is a very busy man, Mr Stark, and he can’t leave DC-”</p>
<p>“I’m very busy too, Mr Bond. Don’t forget that I’m Stark Industries’ CEO. Fury isn’t the only important person this side of the planet. And you’re welcome, but now, if you excuse me…” Tony walks away when he sees Pepper and leaves Coulson sighing to himself by the bar.</p>
<p>He rolls his eyes thinking about SHIELD and Fury, seriously, their <em>gall</em>. He has meetings scheduled for every working day, <em>for the next several months!</em> It’s not like his slouching around all day.</p>
<p>“Thank you,” Pepper says taking the offered glass once he arrives next to her. “I have to warn you, Everhart is here so you may want to avoid her.”</p>
<p>“Who?” He asks confused, coming out of his own head and winded rant.</p>
<p>“Christine Everhart?” Pepper panics, “Tony what are you-no, Tony. We can’t-”</p>
<p>“Sssh, it’s alright,” Tony leaves his empty glass on a walking-by waitress with a tray and spins Pepper slowly, mindful of the martini still in her hand. “We are just dancing.”</p>
<p>“You’re my boss - and no, this is very wrong Tony-” Right, sometimes he forgets Pepper is also his PA…</p>
<p>“You need to calm down, Pep,” Tony insist though, swaying them slowly to the soft musing of the background. “What were you saying about Carrie?”</p>
<p>“Christine, Tony.”</p>
<p>“Right.”</p>
<p>“The woman you slept with before Afghanistan…”</p>
<p>“Riiiight…”</p>
<p>“She’s here somewhere-”</p>
<p>“Of course, she is,” Tony scowls.</p>
<p>“And you should avoid her-”</p>
<p>“Got it, avoid the devious reporter. Consider it-”</p>
<p>“She’s very stubborn. Always knows how and where to dig for the juicy bits-”</p>
<p>“-done. I’ll keep clear of the evil-evil woman.”</p>
<p>“Even though I find her very truthful in comparison with others-”</p>
<p>“Wow, really? I didn’t get much of a background from her the first time.”</p>
<p>“I’m sure you didn’t,” Pepper snorted softly.</p>
<p>“Hey!”</p>
<p>“I think that’s enough dancing,” Pepper finishes her drink suddenly and steps away from him, breathing deeply. “Party or no party, we have work to take care of, Mr Stark. Thank you for the dance, and I recommend you talk with Mrs Miller behind you, to offer her that new contract you were so eager to push for the board to approve after suddenly shutting down our primary source of income, cancelling all of our weapons contracts, and never asking for the opinions-”</p>
<p>“Wow, wow, okay, got it, it’s showtime. No need to go for the jugular so viciously, Pep. Shesh, what was in that martini?”</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Hours later, after making his rounds and talking with most of the guests, and indeed getting Mrs Miller interested in their new projects at SI, Tony takes a break by the bar to refill his glass with something stronger and, hopefully, walk out of another successful charity gala and get home.</p>
<p>But his plan doesn’t go as expected when the woman he was told to avoid suddenly appears next to him, out of nowhere may he add.</p>
<p>“Wow. Tony Stark.” Christine says abruptly from his back, in a very dry tone, and comes to stand next to him on the bar.</p>
<p>“Oh, hey.”</p>
<p>“Fancy seeing you here,” she comments casually, reclining against the countertop.</p>
<p>“Christine,” he says avoiding the awkward moment of not knowing her name thanks to Pepper’s earlier comment.</p>
<p>“You remember me?” She’s thrown off balance for a moment.</p>
<p>Tony is worldly famous for his disregard of common courtesies such as remembering the name of someone he slept with once, <em>and only once</em>, because he’s also a man-slut. It doesn’t bother him anymore thinking about that word in relation to himself, he knows better now. He’s an Olympian for fucks sake. It’s practically coded in his DNA, or at least he’s sure he’ll find it there is he bothered to take a look. He’s Zeus’ grandson and Aphrodite’s eighteenth child, he doesn’t need to know more than that.</p>
<p>Well, at least that was <em>before</em>. His memory is almost perfect now that his powers are back and his body is growing as strong as ever. Every time he sleeps and every time he does something new, he remembers a little more. He closes his eyelids each night and a year of his young days as a God returns to him, or he finds himself earning a sense of deja-vu and then he’s thrown into vividly earning back a few memories of his past, and with them all of his accumulated knowledge, while doing something as mundane as cooking or walking along the shore of the beach. So far, he remembers only his first 286 years of life, but is more than enough to help him deal with his strong and wild magic for the moment; and to remember his many mistakes and to not be as arrogant or a complete dick like his <em>beloved</em>—ha!—grandfather.</p>
<p>“You have a lot of nerve showing up here tonight,” she says squinting at him a little. He notices, crystal clear, her judgement as she talks and raises a curious eyebrow at her. What has he done now? He’s been mostly attending SI meetings and inside his workshop, he didn’t fuck up much recently… right? “Can I at least get a reaction?”</p>
<p>Tony blinks once, twice, and is still waiting for an explanation. “I literally have no idea what you’re talking about, Ms Everhart,” he frowns at her, she returns it and starts searching her purse for something.</p>
<p>“...I was referring to your company’s involvement in this latest atrocity.”</p>
<p>Tony takes a look around where people dance, laugh, drink, and thinks that maybe she isn’t talking about the gala. “I reassess my previous statement as I don’t think you mean this charity is a bad thing, so please, why don’t you enlighten me.”</p>
<p>Christine frowns at him, “I don’t know if you’re being purposefully obtuse or actually sincere.” She sighs and makes a pause before finally taking something out of her handbag and passing it to him. All he sees at first is a picture of some decadent…city. “Is this what you call accountability?” His face goes stony as he gets an idea of what exactly she’s getting to… “It’s a town called Gulmira. Ever heard of it?”</p>
<p>Tony looks up sharply and Christine jumps a little at his intense gaze, “What did you just say?”</p>
<p>“Gulmira…” Christine repeats softer.</p>
<p>A dead horse, dead people, tanks and other broken machinery are depicted on the first photograph, the second is no best as a group of terrorists move a box with missiles and the Stark Industries logo gives him a sickening flashback, while the Ten Rings logo greets him mockingly from the cover of the vehicles at the back, the third is a box and a serial number that he memorizes on the spot to search for later and find the culprit of that weapon crate lying in enemy’s hands, and the final picture is that of a Jerico missile…</p>
<p>Tony grits his teeth and swallows. “When?”</p>
<p>“Yesterday,” the woman answers looking almost surprised at him.</p>
<p>“Can I keep these?” He waves the pictures in the air between them and Christine nods. “Thank you. Here is my statement, I didn’t know, but that isn’t an excuse. I’ll find and squish this cockroach. Do you have a number where I can contact you in the future, Ms Everhart?”</p>
<p>She hums for a moment, until she smiles, “Here.”</p>
<p>“Thank you, again. And forgive me, I have to leave, grab the insecticide and clean the house”</p>
<p>“Thank you for your time, Mr Stark.” She says pleasantly enough now, apparently appeased.</p><hr/>
<p>Tony is in a rage when he leaves, driving along the Pacific Coast Highway at top speed and arriving in record time at his home from the middle of LA. He gets off the car and unmakes the bow tie, sitting a second later in his chair and starting a frantic search through the bug he left on the servers of SI a few weeks ago.</p>
<p>“Sir, Ms Potts is-”</p>
<p>“Mute,” Tony orders without a second thought and continues with the witch hunt in peaceful silence.</p>
<p>He isn’t surprised when Pepper strides into the room a moment later, still dressed in the pretty blue dress from the party.</p>
<p>“I caught you storming away from the gala. What did that woman say to you?” She asks coming next to him and waiting patiently.</p>
<p>Tony merely puts the pictures Christine gave him over the table and continues combing through the files of the contracts signed off in the last month and the serial number from the crate in the picture specifically.</p>
<p>“Oh my God. Are they real? When did this happen?” Pepper cries in outrage.</p>
<p>“That’s Gulmira and those pictures are from yesterday-” suddenly the TV is turned on and they watch in silence as a journalist comments on the tragedy of the people who survived the last terrorist attacks. Tony’s fist collides against the metal bench and the smell of burning plastic floods the room.</p>
<p>Pepper jumps and turns to him, “Gods! Tony, you’re on fire!” She says, watching in horror as fire dances over Tony but only burns the handle of a screwdriver close to his hand.</p>
<p>“It’s fine, I’m fine,” he waves her away, “Just fucking angry!” Tony hisses and the fire burns brighter, turning from orange-red to golden-blue.</p>
<p>“Tony, what-”</p>
<p>“I imagine that you have Coulson’s number?” He asks instead of letting her finish. Maybe if he takes her mind away from the fact that he’s literally on fire then he’ll have more time to deal with how to explain to Pepper who he is and the bullshit that is his life.</p>
<p>“I… Y-Yes, of course. But, Tony, <em>you’re on fire!</em>”</p>
<p>He takes a deep breath and focuses on calming his mind, extinguishing the fire with force and turning to smile at Pepper with an indulgent smile. “I’ll tell you all about it. Later. When Rhodey has some free time and Happy is around. Okay? We have to rid our house of a pest before they worsen everything that I’m trying to fix! Please, Pep,” he turns his pleading eyes at her and Pepper gasps.</p>
<p>“Good lord, what are you?” Her voice trembles and she shakes her head. “No one has the right of sporting such cute puppy eyes. That’s not fair,” and she growls in her hands, turning away grumbling as he laughs. “I’ll call him, but you better explain exactly what is going on here, Tony Stark!”</p>
<p>“Pinkie swear!” Tony shouts as she walks back up the stairs.</p>
<p>The search takes longer than he expected, even after he finally asks JARVIS to take it in his metaphorical hands and goes upstairs to talk with Coulson. His AI sends him a message to his phone and the info of the one continuing Stane’s job on the backstage pops up for him to read. The man’s name is John Adams, one of Obadiah’s bodyguards and his illegitimate son, or so Coulson says. Tony is entirely unsurprised, after his godfather’s initial betrayal he can expect anything from the man and be unresponsive as a rock. But he does grind his teeth when JARVIS also reveals the other SI’s employees working with the man and continuing Obadiah’s work and deals under the table as they answer to Adam’s coaching.</p>
<p>What has him once again angry is a familiar face on TV. The woman reporting the news from Gulmira continues talking softly as Tony sees red. Not only is the Ten Rings banner everywhere, Raza’s face also appears twice more and Tony can barely contain himself in front of the SHIELD agent. One thing is Pepper knowing, another one is SHIELD and Fury’s merry band of sleazy spies.</p>
<p>Tony has a good poker face though, even if his feelings and magic are all but bubbling under his skin, and nor Coulson or Pepper realize his mood is much worse than expected so they continue planning and scheming for a way to catch John and his cohorts with their hands in the dough, to have even more evidence of his complicity.</p>
<p>In the end, Coulson’s idea of apprehending Stane and keeping it quiet for a while is bearing its fruits as his allies are starting to come out of their hidey-holes and Tony wants them all taken care of ASAP.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Thankfully, Coulson and Pepper leave after a while and Tony is alone once more. He loses no time and rushes to the workshop, puts on the Mark III and is soaring the skies a few minutes later, speeding away in-route to Gulmira.</p>
<p>
  <em>“-the ten mile drive to the outskirts of Gulmira can only be described as a descent into Hell, into a modern-day Heart of Darkness. Simple farmers and herders, from peaceful villages, driven from their homes at the butt of Western rifles and the turrets of modern tanks. Displaced from their lands by Warlords and insurgent groups emboldened by their newfound power-”</em>
</p>
<p>The words of the reporter keeps hunting him all the way to Afghanistan and moments like these makes him dislike his good memory. It’s a useful skill most of the time, but it can also turn into his own nightmare under certain circumstances and torture him endlessly. He tries to put it behind him as he reaches the warzone, but he only ends up turning his thoughts to Raza instead.</p>
<p>As he arrives, the place is indeed a mess. The end of a shockwave from the Jerico shakes the earth and he grind his teeth and prepares to land, using the cameras and sensors to find the best spot. On one side there is a tank but only a few people in hiding and safe, on the other side the terrorists are congregated and have many men against a wall and ready to execute them. As he heads that way, a man tries to get his son to comply and save him, getting brutally put down for his efforts and the kid roughly thrown around.</p>
<p>Tony lands heavily in the middle of the commotion and everyone shuts up, looking at him in surprise. The bullets arrive quick though and everything returns into motion. He punches the first terrorist hard and mercilessly, sending him flying away with the force of the hit. The rest of his buddies attack then and they get taken down one by one with the same ruthlessness. His repulsors activates, one hit to the back, one man down, another to the left and another man down, he finishes turning around and the scumbags have taken innocent people hostage so he calms down and takes a second to use the interface to acknowledge the threats and take them down quickly with launchers that shot up from his shoulders.</p>
<p>As the rest of the men run away and many refugees start to leave their cover to look at his handy work, Tony goes for the final heat signature that he knows belongs to one of the terrorists. The suit punches a hole on the wall and with force he pries the man out and into the open while a phone as big as a brick falls to the floor. He takes it and leaves the lone terrorist to the mercy of his previous victims. They deserve some vengeance for themselves after all.</p>
<p>It is a manner of seconds before he has a location for the other end of the line, thanks to JARVIS upgraded system, and he flies away in search of his next target-</p>
<p>But gets knocked down by the tank. How silly of him to forget about it.</p>
<p>As he crawls out of the crate his fall left behind he raises his right arm and a compartment on his forearm opens, launching a small missile at the tank and making it easily explode into tiny little pieces, then he explodes the Jericho’s that are around to finish off the machines and the last remaining terrorists. <em>Now</em> he’s finished, so he takes flight once more. His next target is close by and he finds it easily. The hud of the suit zooms and lets him find out that the groups of roughly a dozen men also has between them Raza. Or his look-alike, because he’s pretty sure he killed the bastard. He’s curious when he gets closer and finds some kind of magical signature coming off them, almost like that of the ring he took from Raza’s body previously.</p>
<p>He doesn’t land, he just hovers in the air for a moment in front of the stunned men on the stopped vehicles. “If you regret your actions then you’ll get the hell out of my way, run away, settle nice and peaceful and reform...or I’ll end you lot right here, right now.” Since he used Allspeak, he knows all of them understood what he said no matter what language they speak, so when their only answer is to make bullets rain all over his armour Tony shows no mercy.</p>
<p>When all of them are dead and Tony still feels the magical signature, he gets closer. Between the burning remains he finds another ring hanging from the limp body of the second Raza. This one is orange, with small round gems and a different design from the first one. When Tony grabs it in the palm of his hand he’s immediately put on edge as illusions start forming around him even though he has the suit between the ring and the flesh of his hand; and a soothing voice starts whispering sweet things on his ear to try to convince him of letting it control his life for the better. He growls like a feral animal and immediately fire surrounds the ring, his insignia golden-blue fire melting the metal in seconds while an inhuman screech reaches his ears from the remaining stone.</p>
<p>“Don’t ever try to manipulate me again,” Tony’s hard and menacing voice says out loud. He only feels a small and fearful touch of the gem’s magic against his mind, begging to stop harming it and complying with his wishes. “I’m not usually this bad of a person you know?” Tony stops the fire and the gem stops acting like a crazy bulb about to explode, “But you and another one before pulled the same shit at me and I don’t like being manipulated. Behave and keep that controlling bullshit away from me, and we’ll be just fine. Okay?” The fear has lessened now, and when the magic reaches for him he feels it agreeing and feeling chastised. “Good, I’m happy that we can understand each other,” Tony finally says, puts the ring in a small compartment of his suit, and scoops the hardening metal that kept the gem before, to reshape it into a ring at a later time.</p><hr/>
<p>Between the time needed from Malibu to Afghanistan and back, and Rhodey’s sudden call when he was returning and the impromptu attack of two F-22 Raptor, Tony arrived later than he expected back at home and Pepper almost found him with the suit still on. He’ll need to upgrade it again and fix the joints so it isn’t so difficult to take if off the next time it gets a little damaged.</p>
<p>“Tony?”</p>
<p>Pepper’s voice echo and he barely has time enough to finish putting up an illusion to keep her from freaking out and seeing the bruises on his exposed skin. The tank left him feeling a little worse for wear but the violet is fading fast already.</p>
<p>“Pep? What are you doing here?” Tony acts confused and raises his head from the machine he’s ‘fixing’ and turns off the welder, blinking in confusion at the windows on the back of the workshop. “Huh, it’s already day time?”</p>
<p>“Yes, Tony,” Pepper rolls her eyes in exasperation, “I <em>thought</em> you were acting a little too responsible in the last few months but I must admit I didn’t miss having to make excuses for your absence to meetings.” She takes a look at his tired appearance and sighs, “Tony, when was the last time you slept?”</p>
<p>Tony acts in a lethargic manner and takes a few seconds to answer, “I...am not sure. What day is today?”</p>
<p>“It’s Monday, one fifty-eight in the afternoon, Sir. Your last nap was the past Friday, for three hours, and on the couch here in the workshop.”</p>
<p>“What?!” Pepper raises her voice a little, “I-I can’t… Oh my… Tony! Get some sleep before your meeting at six or I swear, I’ll drag you there just as you’re right now, to see you suffer for your own bad decisions!” And as quickly as she appeared, Pepper left, heels clicking painfully loud on the tiled floor.</p>
<p>Tony sighs and stands slowly once she’s gone. “Heard the lady, J. Prepare me a relaxing bath, will you dear?”</p>
<p>“Yes, sir. Glittering or cherry bath bomb?”</p>
<p>Tony snorts, “Had enough bombs the past day to last me at least a few weeks, don’t you think?”</p>
<p>“I wouldn’t want to start underestimating you now, Sir.”</p>
<p>“I’d like to think I didn’t program this much sass in you, J. Where is it coming from?”</p>
<p>“You <em>did</em> program me to learn, and I’ve learned from the best.”</p>
<p>“Awww, you’re going to make your old man tear up, J, my boy.”</p>
<p>Tony grunts and he lowers his body on the bubbly glittering water a while later. He looks down at it for a moment and grunts again, but in annoyance this time, “You’re such a menace Jarvis. I’m going to be glittery all week long after this. Pepper is going to be on my arse for this stunt of yours, worse than the UN after a threat of a nuclear bomb.”</p>
<p>“You’re welcome, Sir.”</p><hr/>
<p>He walked from meeting to meeting along the week like a champ, and glitter still blinking to life in his hair and skin sometimes. Pepper was in a warpath and punished him with more meetings for it. But thanking his lucky stars, Tony survived it and when Saturday arrived, he was more than ready to get the difficult talk out of the way already. He kept the secret longer than he expected actually, but then again, developing the new suit took most of his time and attention.</p>
<p>So, there they were, only the four of them sitting around the kitchenet on his workshop after having pizza together.</p>
<p>“Okay, so, explanations… I can do that,” Tony mumbled, finishing a glass of something, he isn’t sure at this point.</p>
<p>“You were <em>on fire</em> Tony! Literally. On. Fire.” Pepper said pointedly and strongly, but her face was a blank mask, probably in preparation of the bomb she was expecting him to release. And with reason.</p>
<p>“He what?!” Rhodey and Happy shouted.</p>
<p>“Does that have anything to do with the armour or whatever you used for Afghanistan the other day?” Rhodey asks.</p>
<p>“Armour? What armour?” Happy’s eyes are wide as he looks from Tony, back to Rhodey, and then Pepper.</p>
<p>“Somewhat,” Tony shrugs, wincing when Pepper turns at him with a glare.</p>
<p>“What is Jim talking about, Tony?”</p>
<p>“Oh, you didn’t know…” Rhodey grimaces and avoids looking at the angry woman.</p>
<p>Pepper sighs and rubs her forehead, “Start from the beginning Tony, please.”</p>
<p>“The beginning,” Tony nods, “Good, okay, the beginning, I can do that…”</p>
<p>Instead of getting another serving from a bottle of scotch nearby, Tony simply grabs the bottle and rolls his chair closer to the couch at the kitchenet. He sits and takes a long swing directly from the bottle before starting telling his story.</p>
<p>“It all started after the bomb went off right in my face during the attack in Afghanistan. I froze next to it like a dumbass instead of using those precious seconds to hide behind the rock, next thing I know I’m knocked back and bleeding, then pain, lots of it, and weird...hallucinations...or so I believed at the time.”</p>
<p>“What do you mean?” Rhodey asks with a frown. “Where you hallucinating or not?”</p>
<p>“I woke up the first time with black and silver butterflies flying around me in a circle, then when they connected the battery to my chest there was a white pigeon, and all the while I thought I was dreaming about fire and volcanoes when I lost consciousness from time to time, oh and the thunder turning into an eagle…”</p>
<p>“Okay, I think we got it, hallucinations from the pain, obviously.”</p>
<p>“If only…” Tony whispers, but they clearly heard it because they roll their eyes at him. “Some things are symbolic, you know? Anyway, when I woke up I met Yinsen, the man that saved me by taking the bits of shrapnel from my chest and the one who put this on me,” Tony taps the reactor after unbuttoning his shirt, showing them for the first time (except for Pepper) what the light in his chest looks like.</p>
<p>“Sweet Jesus,” Happy exclaimed while Pepper just avoided his eyes and Rhodey stared at it gobsmacked.</p>
<p>“Yinsen lost his family to the Ten Rings, you know? He had no reason to help me and all the reasons to hate me instead. They killed his family using my weapons, but he saved my life… <em>he gave his life for me…</em>”</p>
<p>“Tones…” Rhodey exclaimed but Tony avoided his searching gaze.</p>
<p>Tony swallowed thickly and continued, “Every night when I went to sleep after that I...started having dreams. A baby being born, surrounded by these weird people dressed in oddly toga-like cloths, being raised and taught by even odder people, living in some kind of weird place with too much white and gold, and flowers and plants everywhere. Every time I slept, I’d dream of a year of his life going by, or I’d be doing something he did and I’d get very vivid but lucid dreams of him.”</p>
<p>They looked at him with blank faces or frowns as he explained and he knew, they didn’t believe him. At least not all of it.</p>
<p>“Do you know his name…?” Pepper asked. “Maybe it was just someone you knew a long time ago and forgot…”</p>
<p>Tony shakes his head, “The baby was named Hephrodistus during his first birthday anniversary. He was dressed in a white toga-like dress and had a thin golden ring around his head. He was held in the arms of a woman with the reddest of hair I’ve ever seen and she was also dressed in a toga, with lots of jewellery and gold threads around her. Very pretty, very exotic, and very much not human. Also, she glowed...with this pinkish-gold aura…” Tony sighs after looking at them, “I had that face for many days when I first started dreaming, believe me, I’m not nuts.”</p>
<p>“No offence but, that sounds insane boss,” Happy says softly, as if trying not to spook a wild animal, and Tony snorts.</p>
<p>“No shit. Anyway, I kept dreaming, kept living in the cave, the Ten Rings continued demanding I build them weapons, I refused, they tortured me, I gave them a fake ‘yeah, sure, I’ll build you your weapons’ while I instead built an armour made of the scraps from the things they brought for me. Jarvis? Show them the first design.” Tony sits back and takes another drink from the bottle as the screen behind him comes to life and the Mark I appears for his friends to see.</p>
<p>“That’s...crazy,” Rhodey comments, “And you did that while in a cave? With scraps?” He says in awe.</p>
<p>“Yup.”</p>
<p>“That...That’s how you escaped?” Pepper asks and looks at the armour with a little fear. Tony hums.</p>
<p>“Very ingenious boss,” Happy smiles.</p>
<p>After a moment of contemplation and Tony answering their questions about the suit, he continues with the retelling of events.</p>
<p>“With the help of Yinsen, we built the suit and when Raza—the big bad in charge—gave us an ultimatum, we assembled all the parts in a rush. It wasn’t long enough as some of the men started banging at the door and when they opened it the bomb I strapped to the door exploded, warning everyone of our escape plan. I yelled at Yinsen to stick to the plan, but he ran off while the program for the suit loaded and gave me the time I needed to be ready. During those three months I...changed. A lot. Not only was I dreaming, sometimes even while awake, but I also became stronger.”</p>
<p>“How so?” Rhodey asked. Tony grabbed a useless piece of metal from the bench behind him and passed it to Rhodey. He held it looking at it unimpressed, “A scrap of metal?”</p>
<p>He throws it back, “Look,” is all Tony says at them before he grabs it with the tips of his fingers from each side and starts turning...until the metal bends and is nothing but a curled useless mess.</p>
<p>They look at him open-mouthed and Tony passes the piece to Pepper then. She investigates it, tries to do the same as Tony but fails, and passes it to Happy. “How?” She asks while Happy looks at the metal incredulously.</p>
<p>“During the three months I was in that cave, every night I’d dream about a year of the life of Hephrodistus…” Tony takes a deep breath and fiddles with the scrap when Happy hands it back to him. “Three months are ninety-one days, so I dreamt about Hephrodistus’ first ninety years of life while I was there. Do you want to know what I learned?”</p>
<p>They nod and Tony turns the metal into a ball with his hands as nerves take over and he needs something to fiddle with. “Hephrodistus’ was a man capable of bending the laws of physics to use… magic.” Rhodey snorts and Tony smiles at him, “I know, right? Magic? I’d never believe it either...but then I got proof.”</p>
<p>Rhodey’s incredulously raises an eyebrow, “Proof? What proof?” And at the same time, Pepper gasps and covers her mouth, looking at him and <em>knowing</em> the answer already.</p>
<p>Tony winks at her, raises an arm slowly and smiles at his friends. “This proof,” he says letting fire sprout from his skin and dance along his arm. “Since that first night with the first weird dream of a tiny baby crying and covered in fire, it’s been over four months, 124 days, with the odd moments of lucid dreams giving me even more inside to his life. So, in total, I remember the first 296 years of Hephrodistus’ life . . . My life.”</p>
<p>For a long minute, they remain in silence, looking like a fish out of water. Tony plays patiently with the metal ball in his hand and makes it smoother by using his magic, a swift swirl of gold and the thing is perfectly round and shiny. Pepper chokes, but as usual, she’s the first to recover from the shock.</p>
<p>“You are… Hephrodistus?”</p>
<p>Tony stares straight at her and nods, “I am Hephrodistus.”</p>
<p>“And who exactly is <em>Hephrodistus</em>?”</p>
<p>Tony smiles sadly, “Promise me you won’t freak out too much?”</p>
<p>“If I do, I’ll be in all my right to do so. This is weird enough as it is already, Tony.”</p>
<p>He sighed, “I know, I may have panicked a little myself in the past months because of the memories… I won’t be angry at you, of course. You can freak out as much as you want... I only ask that the three of you keep what I’m about to tell you to yourselves. This isn’t something I want people I don’t trust knowing about. Is that okay?”</p>
<p>Happy nods, “It’s understandable.”</p>
<p>Pepper sighs and accepts his request with a sharp nod,</p>
<p>Rhodey frowns at his hands, facing him a while later, “This better be important enough, Tones. It isn’t April anymore and I’ll get mad at you if you’re pranking me out of your allotted time of the year.”</p>
<p>“No joke, Jim. I swear.”</p>
<p>Tony only ever calls Rhodey by his first name when things are dire or serious, so Rhodey nods and sits forward with his elbows on his knees, expectant and nervously tapping one of his fingers against his jaw.</p>
<p>“I was born, as far as I can tell, many thousands of years ago… like, human-settlements-weren’t-even-a-thing long ago.”</p>
<p>“That’s… a long time ago,” Pepper says softly.</p>
<p>“I don’t have all of the info yet, but I’m pretty sure about <em>that</em> at least.” Tony sighs, “It gets worse. This-” the fire returns and Tony looks at it still as surprised as the first time about it, “This is a pretty big deal since not many of the others can handle an element so easily.”</p>
<p>“What does it mean?” Happy asks, and soon adds, “Is it safe to do that?”</p>
<p>Twisting the hand to the side, Tony smiles and turns to Happy, “Completely safe, buddy. I’m the God of Fire after all.”</p>
<p>“Excuse me?” Rhodey chokes out while Pepper and Happy gape at him.</p>
<p>“Pretty early on, I started showing signs of being able to handle fire to my whim. Since I was a new-born, really. I was literally born burning in golden fire. Later on, I became capable of summoning it at will, or subconsciously when angry or scared. So, during my one hundred birthday, I was named the God of Fire.”</p>
<p>Happy snorts, somehow amused, but Rhodey just looks down as if done with his life and steals Tony’s bottle, drinking a lot of it before putting it down with a grimace.</p>
<p>“Which-” Pepper stumbles on her words so she takes a breath before trying again, “Hephrodistus sounds so…”</p>
<p>“I’m a Greek God,” Tony tells her bluntly. “Son of Hephaestus and Aphrodite, thus my name. Father isn’t really creative...about names anyway.”</p>
<p>“I...t-that’s-” Her mouth snaps shut and she looks at him with very wide eyes, unblinkingly.</p>
<p>“This is so unbelievable… Tony, are you sure this isn’t a joke?”</p>
<p>Tony knows it is a terribly alien though. Gods, right? Sounds crazy even to him and <em>he is one</em>. He knows they need time to adapt, mull it over, get used to the idea, but he doesn’t want someone storming into his home to take him to the shrink tomorrow. He has to make sure they believe him or he’s going to be in trouble, and the last thing he wants is to lose their friendship because they think he’s crazy and run off to tattle on him when he’s for once in his life being entirely truthful. And with that thought in his mind, Tony stands, closes his eyes, opens his arms, and lets himself be…</p>
<p>In an instant fire surrounds him, burning away his mortal appearance and showing his real self. He hears the sound of Happy’s chair falling to the floor with a hard and metallic thud, Pepper’s litany of ‘Oh my God’s and Rhodey’s long and very creative streak of curses. Tony opens his eyes once their shock seems to wear off as they fall silent, finding them staring shamelessly.</p>
<p>He lowers his arms and the golden-blue flames recede, leaving behind only warm red fire dancing over his head and making his hair wave as if caused by a soft breeze. He’s taller in this form, taller than all of them, and bigger. His muscles, taut against the red sleeves of his t-shirt, his golden chest piece, the vambraces on his biceps, and the leather strips on his sandals, shows him like a sculpture given life. He also knows his hair changed too, turning back to the golden locks he inherited from his father, with a red shine that is entirely his mother’s influence, and mixing with the fire dancing in his head to make it seen alive like his grandfather likes to style his own. And finally, his eyes should have turned from a rich chocolate brown to molten gold, his magic making them shine brightly, showing the strength that he always keeps on a tight leash to avoid attracting more attention than he wants.</p>
<p>He moves the white cape at his back to the side and sits down once more, waiting for their questions, and they don’t disappoint him.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Retribution</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Tony loves his friends. After a long explanation, they accepted him and things turned back to normal between them, with NO visits to the shrink! They are awesome and he must find some time to get them BIG nice presents, it's just that he doesn't have the damn time for it.</p>
<p>So, Rhodey helps him take down the Ten Rings, Tony finds some more rings, the Ten Rings hide for a while, but not too long, and he blows them up like piñatas. Ah... good times.</p>
<p>But, of course, things can't remain simple and someone makes a move to end his life. Again. Ugh!</p>
<p>Adams wasn't captured alongside his minions when Coulson launched his trap. Being a little more clever than the rest, he escapes and goes after Tony. He makes the mistake of leaving Tony to his chances and rushes off, making an even worse mistake and threatening Pepper. His Pepper! That just won't do.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After Tony explanation, Pepper, Rhodey and Happy get used to Tony’s rediscovered Godhood and all that entails. They come to him with questions very often once the shock pass, a week or so after learning the secret, and Tony is happy to talk with them about his past and everything he misses and remembers.</p>
<p>Of course, Tony continues hunting down the Ten Rings and Rhodey fights with him at first because of it, recruiting Pepper’s help when he can’t talk sense into Tony by himself. It’s a lost cause, but at least Tony can put their minds at ease a little by revealing he’s, by all means, immortal. He doesn’t explain further than that, but they are clearly more at peace afterwards. Rhodey still insists on helping Tony though, passing him information about his next targets if he has any.</p>
<p>When Tony finds the third ring with a magical aura radiating from it, in an undiscovered temple hidden under a mountain on the limits between China and Mongolia of all places, he decides to keep the secret of the place to himself. He only takes the ring, but he knows from the little he saw, that the place is as well preserved for an old temple full of riches as it is, only because of the ward he took down to get in there. It wouldn’t surprise him if soon after he leaves, someone finds temple. He’ll give it three days, at most.</p>
<p>After discovering the second ring Tony got curious and started talking with the consciousness residing in the gems, discovering in the process that they were actual people once, from the only one who answered him. They were powerful warriors defeated by the Makluan King in a time long passed, a king who solidified their souls to harness their life force and powers as his own in retribution for attacking Kakaranthara, the Makluan dragons home planet. They souls hated it since they were still able to sense the world around them as their souls became unable to move on, and became very aggressive to anyone trying to use their life force once the King gave them away to others instead of ending their punishment at the end of his reign. Those revelations led to Tony starting a more focused search of the remaining rings, to release the souls from their prisons and finally let them have some peace.</p>
<p>Letting a soul be trapped for the rest of eternity in the way they have been, and still are, is something he can’t stand for.</p>
<p>The metal encasing of the gems is something he never saw before and each one has AI’s programmed in them to keep the rings from influencing their wearers into destroying them and releasing the souls inside, something that Tony was able to avoid activating since he melted the metal of the orange gem he found on the second Raza, letting the soul talk to him freely. The souls started cooperating more with Tony once he revealed his plans of releasing them from their solid state and as thanks they taught him how to use one of the dormant AI’s functions of connecting all of the rings with each other, helping him locate the rest with ease before he melted the rings from the other two.</p>
<p>The souls forgot their names a long time ago, but they revealed to Tony that each one has a name in concordance with their abilities that they don’t mind him using. The one he found first is called Spectral and is capable of disintegrating anything, just not sentient beings; its power turns any type of object into their primordial substances instantly, tearing it to mere atoms and molecules, but it can only be used once every twenty minutes. The second ring that he took from the second Raza it’s called Liar and can detect someone lying to its wearer and create mental illusions or paralysis. And the third one he found on the abandoned temple under a mountain is Spin, a lavender square gem capable of moving the air like a vortex; it can levitate things, including anyone using it, or be used as an offensive weapon.</p>
<p>To be able to take the souls with him, Tony created a necklace and hung the small gems from it, letting them experience a little freedom from accompanying him along in his day to day life. It became clear it was the right choice to make when they started to turn more talkative and a good company for him as they spent time together.</p>
<p>Taking the Ten Rings down proved to be a time-consuming project. The more bases he destroyed, the harder it was to find the next. So, between destroying them, Tony also took some time to continue his search for the remaining Makluan rings. It was no coincidence that he found two in the hands of members of the Ten Rings and the souls explained to him that the organization discovered one of them many years ago and since then started collecting them. As the men used them for despicable things, the souls drove their users mad and ruined their lives in retribution, in time forgetting their old selves and becoming only capable of feeling anger and resentment for anyone who touched them since everyone who found them only ever used them for their own selfish reasons.</p>
<p>Tony was able to collect two more gems pretty soon when a meeting in Dubai landed them almost literally in his lap. JARVIS was the first to warn him about it with a message to his phone while he had a drink in a meeting room at the Burj Khalifa. The Asian couple arrived on the elevator a while later and Tony took a good look at them while the gems under his shirt excitedly started commenting about the closeness of the other two. He relaxed for the remaining of the long meeting, keeping his inconspicuous act and never raising suspicion from his targets, while in the back of his head he planned how to approach them later and wrote instructions for JARVIS to find him all the dirty laundry he could get about the duo.</p>
<p>The files JARVIS delivered for Tony condemned the Asian couple and made him feel utterly sick with the disgusting excuses for human beings. He felt no remorse for them when he took the couple from their beds that night, liberating them from the rings and delivering the two straight to the authorities with the print files detailing all of the crimes they committed and all of the proof the police would need to put them in prison for the rest of their lives. That was how Zero and Incandescence joined the ranks. Zero is capable of manipulating ice, while Incandescence does fire. Opposites were never better represented as even their personalities clashed and it was like hearing an old couple fighting every time the two souls started their daily argument. Tony only wondered <em>how</em> the couple wearing them previously were able to work together.</p>
<p>And so, one white and one golden gem joined their friends around Tony’s neck.</p><hr/>
<p>John Adams was only a name, another face in the crowd of people trying to get something from Tony, nothing new. Or it was, until he hacked his AI, stole his heart, and threatened Pepper all in a single evening.</p>
<p>But he, like many others before him, made a mistake.</p>
<p>He underestimated Tony, leaving him for dead in the couch of his home. Tony knows if he were a common human he’d be dead ten times over by the time Jarvis restores himself and Pepper’s call comes through, scared for him and breathless. He still hasn't finished the spells to make his idea work, but he fights his exhaustion and creates a temporary heart out of only magic. Since his magic is golden, the light in his chests lights with the same colour once he’s finished.</p>
<p>“Okay,” Tony breathes heavily, “I did it! Wow, that was tiresome,” he sits up, cleaning the sweat from his fringe and grabs his phone from behind him, coming face to face with Pepper. “Pep, you need to be careful, Stane’s son was here a while ago, put Jarvis out of commission and took my reactor-”</p>
<p>“I know Tony! Coulson apprehended the scientists working for him and all of his accomplices in the company, but he couldn’t find the man so we had a hunch he went for you, I’m so relieved that you’re fine. We are going to the arc reactor facilities to the east right now, I think I know where he’s hiding.”</p>
<p>“Be careful Pep, I’ll be there with the suit in five, keep your distance from him until then. The bastard is using the sonic taser prototype, like Stane did.”</p>
<p>“Okay, Tony.”</p>
<p>Rushing to the workshop, where JARVIS already is waiting with the machines ready to assemble the armour around Tony, he flies to Pepper and arrives before the five minutes are up, finding Stane junior threatening Pepper. His armour is clearly a copy of the suit Tony built in Afghanistan and it makes him angry at himself because how could he made such a silly mistake as to leave his first suit’s remains in the crater. He should have thought about it before this! He should have realized someone would go looking for it. He should have been more careful…</p>
<p>The Mark III clashes with Adam’s monster of a suit and they fall through the same hole the guy just crawled out of. They roll and crash with many things on the way down, water breaks free as pipes break, gas leaks into the air, electricity sparks and he fears for an explosion going off any time now, but then they are breaking another wall and ending sprawled on the highway and causing many cars to collide with each other.</p>
<p>As Adam’s shouts in joy and high on the power the suits give him, Tony can only thing of the PR nightmare he’s able to see approaching in his future. He grunts more out of annoyance than straining when the car lands in his open arms and the screaming family inside look at him in fear. Great way to make a first impression…</p>
<p>“Oh, hey… that’s not nice!” He flies and barely escapes being crushed by the accelerating car, but as soon as he recovers Adam is there with an unholy mechanic grunt and shaking the floor under his feet. The madman grabs a bike and shakes the man in it off, hitting Tony with the vehicle and following with a punch.</p>
<p>Shaking the dizziness, Tony feels way out of his depth and makes plans for his training to start as soon as he has time in the nearby future. He’s clearly rusty if this man is capab- Tony is thrown up and down, knocking the air out of him. Stepped on, mocked and launched against a bus like a ragdoll, Tony gets angry and avoids the missile coming at him by raising a magic shield and jumping in action, hitting the other man relentlessly. Punch, kick, repulsor blasts to his face, one hit after another land at Adam’s until the suit in mangled and on its knees.</p>
<p>Out of breath, Tony raises his repulsors and stands back. “Give up, Adams. You may still be able to get a nice cell next to your father once this is over, instead of a crate three feet under…”</p>
<p>“Never!” The man grunts instead, taking Tony by surprise when the suit launches into the air and he shoots up hot on his heels.</p>
<p>They fight with difficulty in the air until Tony is able to grab it and redirect his direction, aiming to go up until the armour starts freezing. At the last moment, the ice makes the suit slippery and Adams gets to grab him and brings Tony face to face.</p>
<p>“You had a great idea, Stark, but my suit is more advanced in every way!” The man laughs while Tony keeps him from crushing the armour around his neck.</p>
<p>He knows better than to play too much with an enemy in the battleground, but the comment of the clearly delusional man almost has his cackling. More advance suit? What a <em>joke</em>!</p>
<p>“How’d you solve the icing problem?” Tony can’t help but taunt Adams, smiling under his helmet. Even laughing when the man questions ‘Icing problem?’ before freefalling to his death. “Might want to look into it,” he shouts, waving at the suit as it speeds down.</p>
<p>As he admires the view, he starts feeling the strain in his magic and sighing he starts lowering himself and wheezing with the effort of keeping his magic going. He lands on top of the SI facilities and rolls on the floor, cutting the connection to the suit and making his magic retreat and sit snugly in his chest once more. The suit is heavy, but not enough to slow him down with his improved strength. He’ll have to make do with only his fist and brains from now on-</p>
<p>Adams lands heavily behind Tony with a ‘Nice Try!’ and he turns to stop the punch with one hand, stunning the man for a second, time enough for Tony to roll back and create distance between them. The struggle begins anew and Tony exerts himself to keep up with Adams inside of a fully powered suit. Damn, but he created a good piece of machinery. It can keep up against a God! Hephaestus is going to be so proud when Tony shows it to him…</p>
<p>Since no one can earn the upper hand in the close-range fight, Tony activates the flares on his tight with a soft pat and magic, blinding Adams and giving him time to make a strategic retreat.</p>
<p>“Clever, Stark, but not good enough!” Adams mocks from the cloud of smoke while Tony observes him at a distance, waiting for the right time…</p>
<p>Distracting Adams by flaring some sparks in the opposite direction, Tony jumps on his back and starts tearing apart the suit. Wires and pieces of metal come off while the man tries to wrestle him off until the suit starts shutting down and in the mad tussle to get him off they stumble on top of the arc reactor, the glass rooftop creaks, the pieces of metal fall and hit the reactor, suspicious sparks go off and that’s not likely good news. Tony wiggles out of Adam’s grasp and flies, losing his helmet in the process.</p>
<p>Adam throws it away like it is a piece of junk and the chest of the armour opens up. He’s trapped in the suit, at risk of falling to his death if he moves too much, but he doesn’t seem to care since he laughs and points his left arm with missiles at Tony.</p>
<p>“I didn’t have much hope about this when father told me about it at first, but I must admit, I’m deeply enjoying the suit.”</p>
<p>He smiles madly and the first missile goes widely off the mark while Tony looks at it nonchalantly, raising a hand in its direction and mocking the man, “Really, Adams?” But he’s distracted from the retort of the man when the arc reactor under him stars flaring madly. “Uh-oh, showtime’s over. I gave you your chance, don’t blame me now for your own fuck ups, man. Bye!”</p>
<p>“Come back here, Stark, and fight me like a man!”</p>
<p>Tony snorts in the air and deigns to reply one last time to Adams just to be a dick, “I’m no simple man, Adams. I’m a God. I could do a lot more to you than simply leave you here to die because of your own mistakes. You should be thankful that I’m not a vicious and vengeful God like some others I know. You’ll die mostly painlessly, is more than I can say for some of my family’s enemies. Oh and, be a dear and send my regards to grandfather once you arrive in hell. Ta-!” He shot up and away, hearing the shouting man even when he lands next to Pepper, Coulson, Rhodey and some other agents.</p>
<p>“Tony!” Pepper shouts and launches at him.</p>
<p>“Wow, you’re all here for me? Touching-”</p>
<p>“Stark, where is Mr Adams?”</p>
<p>“-but we need to get out of here, the reactor is about to go boom and it’s all Adams fault for throwing shit inside of the mechanism. So come on, chop-chop. No need for us to blow up along with the bastard.”</p>
<p>“He’s done for then,” Rhodey nods pleased, “Good.” And he takes a stunned Pepper’s hand and lets her sit in Tony’s R8, taking the wheel himself and driving away. When did he get his car out of his house…?</p>
<p>The agents follow suit when loud noises come from inside of the facilities and Tony shots up once more, landing on top of a building far away, watching how the agents cut the streets and make people retreat very fast. A minute later, a blinding white light shot up high and got lost in the clouds, the facility explodes, and no one dies needlessly. Tony smiles; no one but Adams…</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>And the last one, for now.</p>
<p>Am I the only one who missed the 'Rings' making a bigger appearance in the MCU? Because, Raza had one, the movie even made a big shot of the man twirling his ring while watching Tony, and then... nothing!</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Comment and let me know what you think. Love it? Hate it? Want to throw something at me?</p><p>Let's pray that Inspiration wants to stay for a while now.<br/>There's a quarantine going on buddy, it's not safe to leave.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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